


1>|E RjE:LlG10f( 

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Philip S. Moxom^ 




LIBRARY^ OF CONGRESS. 



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Shelf..M.T_(r4 

UNITED STATES OF AMER5CA. 



THE RELIGION OF HOPE 



THE 



Religion of Hope 



BY 



PHILIP STAFFORD MOXOM 



AUTHOR OF 



THE AIM OF LIFE," AND "FROM JERUSALEM TO NIC/EA 




boston 

ROBERTS BROTHERS 
1896 



v^ ^ 






Copyright, 1895, 
By Roberts Brothers, 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



TO 

MY WIFE AND CHILDREN. 



PREFACE 



'THHE sermons contained in this volume were 
not composed with reference to any unity 
of plan. They have been selected from the ac- 
cumulated product of thirteen years of labor. 
The earhest was written in 1880, the latest in 1893. 
All were preached during my ministry of eight 
and a half years in Boston, and all but two were 
written in that period. All, of course, have been 
subjected to revision, but not to such revision as 
to change their essential form and substance. 
Thus they truly reflect the attitude of my mind 
and heart toward the fundamental truths of Chris- 
tianity during the larger part of my service as a 
Christian minister; and they show that the note 
of hopefulness has been, throughout, a dominant 
note. In arranging these sermons for publication, 
I have not followed the chronological order, but 



viii Preface. 

rather have sought to put them in something Hke 
a logical sequence. They begin with hope, and 
end with heaven. A considerable number have 
been printed in periodicals, one of them two or 
three times. They are now presented to the pub- 
lic in permanent form mainly in response to many 
requests both of former parishioners and of others, 
and with the earnest wish that they may bear a 
heartening message to some of those who have 
found, or would find, in the Christian hope the 
great solace for their afflictions and the unwasting 
inspiration for their endeavors. 

PHILIP STAFFORD MOXOM. 

WiNGOOD Lodge, Springfield, Mass., 
December, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. Christianity the Religion of Hope . . 13 

II. The Love of God 37 

III. The Kingdom of God 55 

IV. The Coming of Christ y^ 

V. Saving Others and Saving Self ... 93 

VI. The Mind of Christ 113 

VII. The Enthusiasm of Jesus 133 

VIII. Christian Unity 151 

IX. The Church, the Body of Christ. . . 169 

X. The Increase from God 187 

XI. Forsaking all for Christ 203 

XII. A Question of the Heart 221 

XIII. Foes in the Household 243 

XIV. Not Destruction but Fulfilment . . 261 
XV. The Joy of the Lord 277 

XVI. The Need of Patience 297 

XVII. The Way to Heaven 315 



CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF 
HOPE. 



My own hope is, a sun will pierce 

The thickest cloud earth ever stretched : 

That, after Last, returns the First, 

Though a wide compass round be fetched ; 

That what began best, can't end worst. 
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. 

Robert Browning. 



THE RELIGION OF HOPE 



I. 



CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF 
HOPE. 

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in be- 
lieving, that ye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy 
Spirit. — Rom. xv. 13. 

/CHRISTIANITY is pre-eminently the religion 
^-^ of hope. Its chief message to the world is 
the declaration of God's good-will toward men, and 
its chief expression is Jesus of Nazareth, whom 
God anointed " with the Holy Spirit and with 
power; who went about doing good, and healing 
all that were oppressed of the devil ; for God was 
with him." 

In forming our judgment of Christianity, we 
must discriminate between what is accidental and 
transient on the one hand, and what is essential 
and permanent on the other. The discriminating 
process must be carried, not only through all the 
organizations and institutions and theories and his- 



14 The Religion of Hope. 

tory that are generally designated by the term 
" Christian," but also through the Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testaments. In these Scriptures 
we find a revelation of God which surpasses all 
others in clearness and fulness. This is not the 
only revelation of God, for there are also divine 
revelations in the order of nature, and in the con- 
stitution and history of man. These, from one 
point of view, are preparatory, logically, if not 
always chronologically, for the revelation in the 
Bible; from another point of view, they both 
supplement and confirm that revelation. By vir- 
tue of his spiritual nature, man has a capacity for 
knowing God, and to this capacity there has always 
been a corresponding communication. Were it 
not for the subjective capacity, there could be no 
objective revelation. 

The Biblical revelation is historical and pro- 
gressive, exhibiting a distinct advance from the 
naive monotheism of Abraham and Moses, with 
its predominant anthropomorphic elements, to the 
purer and loftier monotheism of the eighth cen- 
tury prophets ; and there is a still greater advance 
from the monotheism of the prophets to the pro- 
found spiritual theism of Jesus. 

Because revelation is progressive, correspond- 
ing to man's growing power of apprehension, and 
depending upon it, there are many features of the 
revelatory process that are incidental and transient. 
Learning is, in part, a process of discarding. Low 



Christianity the Religion of Hope, 15 

ideas of the divine nature are continually replaced 
by higher. New points of view necessitate an 
abandonment of the old. Imperfect symbols are 
dropped, as their defects become apparent, and 
better symbols take their place. For example, as 
I have suggested, the later prophets, — Micah, the 
two Isaiahs, Jeremiah, and others, — in their con- 
ception of the Deity, show great progress beyond 
the conception which was attained even by the 
best minds of the times of the Exodus and the 
Judges, or even by the earlier prophets, — Samuel, 
Elijah, and Elisha; while Jesus occupies a far 
higher level of spiritual view than that of the 
prophets, and his thought has a larger spiritual 
content than theirs. 

This progress is not in any sense artificial, nor 
is it a mere order of sequence; it is vital and ex- 
perimental, and has an indestructible continuity. 
In the advance much is left behind, but something 
is steadily carried forward. The new is, in a true 
sense, the out-growth of the old. The plant is the 
evolution of the seed, but the process of develop- 
ment is also a process of incrementation. 

In order, therefore, to get a true and adequate 
idea of the Biblical revelation of God, we must 
take our stand on the highest point reached in the 
revelatory process which has record in the Bible, 
and that is the personality and teachings of Jesus 
Christ. From this point we may trace the slowly 
ascending and slowly brightening path that leads 



1 6 The Religion of Hope. 

up from the Mosaic age to the time when Jesus, 
comprehending at once the essential nature of 
God and the manner and form in which that na- 
ture is most perfectly revealed to man, said : ** God 
is spirit," and " He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father." Manifestly, to take our position at 
any point in the process of Biblical revelation 
short of the summit on which Jesus stands, and 
to say of the view obtainable from that point, 
•* This is the true vision of God," is to misunder- 
stand and to misrepresent the Bible. 

The same is true with respect to the idea of 
Christianity which we are to derive from the 
record of the revelation that rises to culminating 
expression in the Son of God. No book of the 
Bible, preceding the Gospels, truly represents or 
defines Christianity. Only in Him of whose spirit 
Christianity is the efifluence do we find a true ex- 
ponent of what essential Christianity is. 

But there is also a prophetic element in the 
Biblical revelation of God. What Jesus gives to 
the world is not simply another and higher stage 
in the revelatory process than that which is given 
successively by patriarchs and prophets. The 
singularity of his communication is partly in this, 
that his revelation of the Father is not only com- 
plementary to all preceding revelation, but it is 
also prophetic and ideal. The value of the New 
Testament is chiefly in the fact that it is far more 
than a high-water mark of the generic spiritual 



Christianity the Religion of Hope. 17 

perception of men. It sets a standard toward 
which the world still strives, and communicates 
a thought which the world has not yet wholly 
grasped. The spiritual progress of so much of 
humanity as has come within the circle of Biblical 
communication is a progress, not beyond the point 
reached in the New Testament, but toward that 
point, that prophetic revelation which Jesus, the 
chiefest of all the prophets, or speakers for God, 
both gave and was. All the advance of philo- 
sophical thought toward the true and perfect idea 
of God has been an advance toward the thought 
of Jesus. All the progress of that spiritual life 
which is the expression of spiritual thought is a 
progress toward the life of Him w^io *' came from 
God and went to God," the " Son of Man," who 
was yet " the only begotten Son of God." 

So, too, and necessarily, there is a prophetic and 
ideal element in the idea of Christianity which 
Jesus gives. The religious thought and life of 
to-day are far higher and purer than the religious 
thought and life of the early Christian centuries. 
This is a truth which no careful student of Chris- 
tian history will for a moment deny. Both the 
intellectual apprehension and the practical applica- 
tion of Christian principles are broader and juster 
and more thoroughgoing to-day than at any time 
in the past. Yet, when we succeed in clearly dis- 
criminating essential Christianity from all that is 
incidental and adventitious; when we carry this 



1 8 The Religion of Hope. 

process not only through historical and institu- 
tional Christianity, but even through the New 
Testament, until we discover the fundamental and 
enduring elements of the Christianity which Jesus 
embodied in his person and manifested in his 
action and expressed in his authenticated teach- 
ings, — we can understand the real meaning of 
Lessing's extravagant, yet not altogether untrue 
saying: '' The religion of Christianity has been on 
trial eighteen hundred years ; the religion of Christ 
is yet to be tried." We shall understand also, and 
approve, the statement of Principal Fairbairn, that 
true Christianity " is an ideal for the whole of 
humanity, and a great method for its realization." 
The revelation which Jesus makes of the divine 
interest in man, and the divine purpose to be real- 
ized in man, discloses also the forces and motives 
by which man is to achieve a spiritual destiny in 
the unfolding of the kingdom of God. The funda- 
mental element in the Christianity of Jesus is the 
love of God for humanity. This love lies at the 
base of all supernatural manifestations, is the law 
of all providential discipline, the spring of all 
ethics, and the ground of all hopes. No commu- 
nication takes rank with this communication. No 
principle limits or conditions this principle. As 
high as heaven, as deep as hell, as wide as space, 
is this fact which Jesus utters and embodies, — the 
love of God for men. Essential Christianity is the 
declaration and concrete expression of this love 



Christianity the Religion of Hope. 19 

through the archetypal divine sonship and self- 
sacrifice of Jesus. All the forces that work for 
human salvation, in the widest sense, flow out 
of this elemental fact thus expressed in a unique 
yet universally related and all-relating personality. 
The revelation which Jesus makes of divine Father- 
hood and human sonship discloses the ideal toward 
the full realization of which the moral and spiritual 
hfe of man is a progress. This divine-human rela- 
tion involves in itself the perfect good of the indi- 
vidual man and the perfect good of mankind. On 
the fundamental fact of man's moral relation to 
God, a relation exhibited and confirmed by the 
Christ, rests every principle, and out of it rises 
every force of that great upward movement of 
humanity to which history, with increasing clear- 
ness, bears witness. All that is best in our in- 
dividual characters, as well as in our social morals, 
our sciences, arts, industries, politics, and religions, 
has its primal spring in that relation. Ignorant as 
he may be blind and bestial as he often is, man 
nevertheless is the child of God ; therefore he is 
the object of the divine love, the subject of the 
divine tuition and discipline, and, in the attainment 
of his true destiny, the fulfilment of the divine 
purpose. The revelation of God's attitude toward 
man and of man's true relation to God, which Jesus 
makes, involves all that is essential in his teach- 
ing and in his experience. It involves the cross, 
not as a necessary material fact, but as a symbol of 



20 The Religion of Hope. 

spiritual fact, — the fact of supreme self-sacrifice 
for moral ends. 

There is much of form and organization and 
theory that has got itself named Christian, which, 
at the best, sustains but a loose and accidental 
relation to essential Christianity. There is much 
also which essential Christianity has created as 
instrument for the realization of its ends. All this, 
for the present, may be left aside. Nor is it neces- 
sary here to attempt a detailed elucidation of the 
spiritual contents of essential Christianity, either as 
doctrine or as life. A single point now claims 
attention. Christianity as a revelation of divine 
Fatherhood and human sonship, and of divine 
love seeking the full realization of truth and love 
in human experience and character and destiny, is 
pre-eminently a religion of hope. 

In a higher degree than ever any other teacher 
personally represented what he taught, Jesus per- 
sonally represented and embodied essential Chris- 
tianity. It never should be forgotten that Chris- 
tianity is fundamentally a spirit and method of 
life. It is not primarily a church, nor a ritual, nor 
a theology, nor even a religion, but a life from 
God and in God, which has its supreme embodi- 
ment in Jesus Christ. It is far more than a system 
of ethics or an ethical regimen. As far as mere 
ethical principles are concerned, there is little in it 
that is original; though the moment we consider 
the question of moral motives, the originality of 



Christianity the Religion of Hope. 2 1 

Jesus' method vividly appears. It is difficult, if 
not impossible, to find any precept in the Gospels 
which, in some form, had not been given to men 
before. Indeed, the great doctrines of the unity 
of God, the Divine Providence over earthly affairs, 
the Fatherhood of God, the ubiquity of the Divine 
Spirit, the mercifulness of God to sinners, man's 
duty of repentance and faith toward God and 
charity toward his fellow-man, and the hope of 
immortality, all had found expression in some form 
before Jesus came. But the full significance of 
truth expressed in a life the world had not seen 
until Jesus came. What men had apprehended 
only in detached fragments of spiritual truth and 
beauty, and, for the most part, in the form of pre- 
cept or proposition, Jesus exhibited in the har- 
mony and completeness of a living embodiment. 
Thus embodied, all truths took on a new meaning, 
or rather, now first disclosed their real meaning. 
To see one who loved God with all his heart and 
soul and mind and strength, and his neighbor as 
himself, made the old precept a new communica- 
tion. To see in the clear face of the Son the 
unmarred reflection of the perfect Father made 
the revelation of God a new revelation. To see 
faith and obedience and holy love perfectly real- 
ized in a human life was to have a new sense of 
what faith and obedience and love are. In Jesus 
all the scattered rays of truth were gathered up 
into the glowing and dynamic centre of a divinely 



22 The Religion of Hope, 

human personality. He justified, therefore, as 
well as inspired, the testimony that, " God hav- 
ing of old time spoken unto the fathers in the 
prophets by divers portions and in divers man- 
ners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto 
us in a Son." 

Jesus Christ, then, in his person and teaching 
and deeds, is the Gospel, — the good tidings of 
God to men. His function, as well as his person, 
is thus, in a true sense, unique. Neither prophet 
nor apostle, neither Isaiah nor Paul, but Jesus 
only, adequately expresses and defines essential 
Christianity. The real progress of Christian 
thought is advance in power to understand and 
interpret Jesus. A book may be exhausted, for 
the capacity of " the letter" is limited ; but a per- 
sonality — such a personality — is inexhaustible. 
" The letter " is form, and easily becomes fetters ; 
** the spirit" is life, and has no bounds. Men 
are perpetually trying to put Christianity into 
dogmatic systems, which they label Calvinism and 
Arminianism, Old Theology and New Theology ; 
but they are perpetually baffled by the fact that 
Christianity, as the effluence of the living Christ, 
overflows all boundaries, transcends all forms, and 
convicts all definitions of inadequacy and error. 
Everything is transitory save the spirit. Jesus, as 
the revelation of God and the manifestation of 
the love of God realized and individualized in the 
spirit of man, is the secret of the power which 



Christianity the Religion of Hope. 23 

Christianity possesses of perpetually renewing itself. 
Institutions, theories, and forms become decadent 
and effete. Then men say, Christianity is moribund-, 
but while they are brooding over the death of a 
faith, behold ! that faith is rising in fresh power, 
putting forth new energies and creating new in- 
struments to serve its ends. 

A clear apprehension of Christianity as a spirit 
of life, having its supreme manifestation in the 
Son of God, makes argument to prove that it is a 
religion of hope seem almost superfluous. 

But let us proceed to explicate this truth some- 
what in detail. The message of Jesus to the 
world was one of hope, for it was a message of 
salvation. He declared that " God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever trusteth in him might not perish but 
have life eternal," and he presented himself as the 
expression of this love and the executor of this 
purpose. He took to himself, as definitive of his 
mission, in a broader sense than the prophet 
understood, the words of the Isaiah of the exile : 

" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor : 

He has sent me to proclahn release to the captives, 

And recovering of sight to the blind, 

To set at liberty them that are bruised, 

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 

He came not to rebuke men, but to enlighten 
them. His message was one of cheer, not one 



24 TJie Religion of Hope. 

of condemnation : " For God sent not the Son 
into the world to judge the world; but that the 
world should be saved through him." His words 
were continually provocative of hope. His minis- 
try of healing was, in a large, sweet way, illustra- 
tive and symbolical. His practical helpfulness 
reinforced his declarations of divine' purpose in a 
manner that men could feel and understand. 
From the earliest times men were more ready to 
credit God with the purpose of smiting than they 
were to believe in his disposition to heal. Jesus 
declared the love of God to men, and, avowedly 
fulfilling the will of God, put the message into a 
palpable gift of health to diseased and tormented 
bodies. Thus he dissolved that ignorant fear of 
God which was a main hindrance to the reception 
of his message. He declared the law of love be- 
tween man and man, and illustrated the declara- 
tion by his invincible goodness and his utter un- 
selfishness in helping the needy of every class. 
Thus he dissolved the antagonisms that thrust men 
apart and made them mutual hurters instead of 
mutual helpers of one another. He uttered and 
embodied the divine principle of love which is at 
once the motive of true worship and the law of 
right action. This was lifting life to a new level. 
His purpose was but dimly apprehended then, and 
is far from being clearly apprehended even now. 
Still, despite their little apprehension of Jesus, 
many of those among whom he lived and taught 



Christianity the Religion of Hope. 25 

awoke to a new hope, and the impulse of that 
hope created the new hfe which dates from the 
resurrection of Jesus. 

What Jesus did, he does still. The material cir- 
cumstances of his ministry, for example, his works 
of healing, as to their form, are incidental. In 
essence, the ministry of Jesus continues ; and not 
as the prolonged impression of historic events 
simply, but as the ever fresh impression of his 
spiritual force — his transcendent personality. 
Treating his life historically, we must say " he 
was," and *' he did"; but treating his life on the 
higher plane of his essential mission to the w^orld, 
we instinctively drop the past tense. The Christ 
belongs to all time, and is the contemporary of 
every age. His message is not a mere reminis- 
cence of a past event; it is a vital communication 
of the present and dateless gospel of God. 

The world has greatly changed in the nearly 
two millenniums that have passed since Jesus of 
Nazareth began his ministry in Palestine, but it 
has not lost its essential relation to him. He is 
more familiar to the general mind, but he is still 
pre-eminent. His teaching is better understood, 
but its force is still unexhausted. Man is less 
abject and bestial, less ignorant and superstitious 
than he was, but he is still dependent upon " our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." In a true sense, 
then, what Jesus did, he still does; only, the scope 
of his ministry ever widens as man's capacity 



26 The Religion of Hope. 

to understand and appreciate that ministry in- 
creases. 

Jesus' message of hope to men was not simply a 
promise, of *' something better by and by," — that 
is, in eternity, conceived as a condition of being to 
be entered upon by mankind collectively at the 
end of time. He did not say, ** Life is evil and 
irremediable here and now, but in the hereafter it 
will be wholly good." He had little to say of the 
hereafter, in the sense in which that term is com- 
monly used. He said enough. He gave the fruit- 
ful germs of thought that grow with the growth of 
man's spirit into ever enlarging spiritual concep- 
tions of humanity's future. But he did not speak 
as fully and as explicitly of the hereafter as many 
have supposed. The promise of " the better by 
and by" which men needed to hear was implicitly 
in all his teaching, but the pledge of its fulfilment 
was to be found in a bettered present. If the seed of 
the better age is not in to-day, its flower and fruit 
will not appear in the distant to-morrow. Jesus 
did not leave men in their misery simply enriched 
by a hope. He began in their minds and hearts 
the process which, making the present better, 
brightens all the future. Man himself must be 
improved if there is to be any permanent improve- 
ment of his environment. Civilization is first sub- 
jective. Jesus gave to men a revelation of God 
that awakened trust in the divine goodness. This 
trust was itself at once a ground and spring of 



Christianity the Religion of Hope. 27 

hope and a powerful motive to righteousness. To 
deepen one's faith in the good is to generate 
rational hope and to elevate character. He 
taught men the meaning of love and planted in 
them the root of that divine affection which must 
grow from heart to heart until all humanity is bound 
in indissoluble, holy brotherhood. The man who 
loves to-day, even feebly, gives promise in himself 
of the day when men will love their neighbors as 
themselves. What Jesus did/^r man was, most of 
all, what he did iji man, and in man he began the 
process of which " the new heaven and the new 
earth " will be the natural and divinely ordained 
culmination. The leaven in the meal is the finest 
symbol of Christ's method. The spirit works 
within, and from within outward. 

The character of Jesus' work in man is the best 
answer to the pessimism of much '' Christian the- 
ology," as well as of unchristian philosophy. He 
gave to human life an impulse toward the good 
that strengthens and broadens with every passing 
century. In giving that impulse he discloses at 
once both the actual and the ideal of human life 
from the moral point of view. What life is, he 
shows less by any denunciation of evil than by the 
light which he sheds upon it from the height of 
his own excellence. His pure spirit inevitably 
reveals and condemns the grossness and sordid- 
ness of men. His utter truth exposes and judges 
their deep insincerities. His absolute goodness 



28 The Religion of Hope. 

unmasks and rebukes their multiform selfishness. 
No words can represent the deformities and defi- 
ciencies of man's life from a moral point of view 
so vividly as those appear in the light of Jesus' 
character. This disclosure of the actual he made, 
and this disclosure he still makes. ^ To-day, as 
truly as when he walked in Judea, he la3^s bare 
the sin and folly of men. Uttering no audible 
word, he stands in our market-places and shows 
the immoralities and selfishness of our trade; he 
stands in our churches and uncovers our miserable 
insincerities and slavish idolatries. When we look 
at him with honest, open eyes, our conceit shrivels, 
and our petty proprieties and conventional moral- 
ities refuse longer to hide from us our real defects 
and positive sins. This disclosure Jesus inevitably 
makes, because in him is the reality of truth and 
righteousness. 

But while he thus discloses the actual, he also 
discloses the possible, — the ideal. What he is in 
spirit shows men what they may be. His stain- 
less purity, his boundless charity, his invulnerable 
sweetness and patience, his unbroken, intimate 
communion with the Father, his loftiness of mind, 
his perfect righteousness, his wonderful peace — 
that peace which we so admire and covet and 
yet so piteously fail to attain — that peace which, 
when every one else was torn by passion, or fretted 
by care, or shaken by fear, or harassed by doubt, 
enveloped him in an atmosphere of beautiful holy 



CJiristianity the Religion of Hope. 29 

calm, — all this reveals to us our possible attain- 
ments as children of God. This disclosure to us 
of human excellence kindles hope in our hearts, 
and hope passes into aspiration and impulse. 
" Looking unto Jesus " becomes a striving toward 
" the perfect man, . . . the measure of the stature 
of the fulness of Christ." All spiritual progress 
in the individual life witnesses to the presence 
and illustrates the power of the hope that Jesus 
awakens. 

But the ideal disclosed is more than an ideal of 
individual life. There is a great prophetical sug- 
gestiveness in the life and teaching of Jesus. In 
himself he prophesies, not only the coming man, 
but also the coming order, the coming reign of 
love, the coming health of the world, and the 
coming peace. The ideal is not sharply defined 
in words. It is hinted, rather, and the hints, at 
first vague, grow clearer and clearer with the 
growth of men in power to see and to lay hold 
of the spiritual meaning and ends of life. Ex- 
plicitly, Jesus did speak of the kingdom of God; 
but the conception was too great to be grasped at 
once, as it is too expansive to be exhausted at any 
point in subsequent history. But it was definite 
enough to constitute an ideal grand and sweet, if 
vague; and from that ideal sprang the hope which 
works perpetually toward a higher civic and eco- 
nomic organization of human society, and purer 
government, and larger liberty. 



30 The Religion of Hope. 

So, in this twofold disclosure of the actual and 
the ideal, Jesus begets hope in man's heart. In- 
deed, the very disclosure of the actual and the 
possible, in connection with each other, generates 
in man the unquenchable desire to pass from the 
one to the other. Hope is the reaching forward 
of the soul from the actual to the ideal. St. Paul 
significantly said : ** We are saved by hope." 

But the self-revelation which Jesus gives, — the 
exhibition of himself as the Son of Man and the 
Son of God, — in his function of lover and Saviour 
of the world, is central, because the highest power 
among men is personal. It is not the touch of 
precepts or ideas or theories, but the touch of a 
personality, that moves us, that imparts the vital 
impulse. The love of Christ, the love which he 
wakens in our hearts, is the great spring of hope, 
because that love makes us sharers in his aspira- 
tions, his ideals, his faith, and his enterprise. That 
love binds us to him in his entire mission. Amidst 
a world seemingly tottering to its ruin, he stood 
and saw the salvation of the world and the triumph 
of good — saw it through the shadow of the cross 
that fell darkly athwart his path. Surrendering 
himself to the sharpness and apparent utter defeat 
of death, even while dying he triumphed in the 
vision of a completed redemption. Loving him, 
man shares in his power of forecast and triumphant 
anticipation. Under the influence of this tran- 
scendent personality, man strives to realize in 



Christianity the Religion of Hope, 3 1 

himself and in the world the ends toward which 
Jesus wrought, and so becomes missionary and 
martyr of the gospel. Hope passes from a senti- 
ment into a principle. It incorporates itself into 
character. It becomes an element of righteous- 
ness because it is rooted in the soul's faith in God, 
and conviction of the reality and permanence of 
the good. 

This hope, which Jesus awakens and continually 
nourishes, is the pledge of the salvation of the world. 
It is a spring of spiritual energy beneath all our 
Christian institutions and organizations ; and, vital- 
izing missionary enterprise, transforms it from a 
perfunctory or selfish propagandism into a confi- 
dent and enthusiastic service of love to humanity. 
Often repudiated in theories of human life, and 
denied in the actions of men, and dishonored by 
feeble utterances in the creeds of the church, it 
persists in all hearts that Jesus has touched and 
quickened into the life of the spirit. In some 
form it is the real force of human progress. It 
is the silent but most true witness to the divin- 
ity that shapes- the course of human history, and 
to the divine origin and immortality of the human 
soul. In "the hope of the gospel," that gospel 
which Jesus embodies and perpetually imparts, 
the salvation of the world is already propheti- 
cally achieved ; and the Christian sings with a 
victor's confidence: — 



32 The Religion of Hope. 

" I feel the earth move sunward, 
I join the great march onward, 
And take by faith while living 
My freehold of thanksgiving." 

Hope, then, is not a matter of mere sentiment, 
or of a happy temperament. It is allied, not with 
weakness, but with strength ; not with baseless 
speculation, but with firm grasp of fundamental 
truth ; not with fond and foolish fancy, but with 
solidest loyalty to righteousness ; not with easy 
credulousness, but with most strenuous and most 
reasonable faith in God. To hope for the final 
and absolute supremacy of goodness is among the 
finest and most rational exercises of Christian vir- 
tue. It is doubt that is weakness; it is pessimism 
that is the real denial of the Christian faith. It is 
want of large, tenacious, and invincible hope that 
often turns the nominal Church of Christ into a 
half-hearted army, feebly fighting a battle of which 
defeat is a foregone and accepted conclusion. 

To cultivate hopefulness is a duty, quite as much 
as it is a duty to cultivate morality. It belongs to 
the Christian's discipline in righteousness. Ra- 
tional optimism, the optimism of the Christian 
faith and the Christian spirit, is grounded in the 
reality and perfection of God. It is the irrefutable 
deduction from the gospel of the Son of God, 
which is the gospel of Sovereign Law and 
Sovereign Love. 



Christianity the Religion of Hope, 33 

" The truths of God forever shine, 

Though error glare and falsehood rage ; 
The Cause of Order is divine, 
And Wisdom rules from age to age. 

" Faith, Hope, and Love, your time abide ! 
Let Hades marshal all his hosts. 
The heavenly forces with you side. 
The stars are watching at their posts." 



II. 

THE LOVE OF GOD. 



Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest and the 

best, 
Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope or break thy 

rest, 
Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the 

rolling 
Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine, or the 

pest! 
Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart's 

desire ! 
Thro' the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what 

is higher. 
Wait till Death has flung them open, when the man will 

make the Maker 
Dark no more with human hatreds in the glare of deathless 

fire! 

Alfred Tennyson. 



II, 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 

God is love. — i John iv. i6. 

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eter- 
nal life. — John iii. i6. 

'T^HESE two sentences express one truth, and 
-*■ that truth is the chief revelation in the sacred 
Scriptures. It is at once the reason and cause 
and the supreme motive of the Christian ministry. 
"God is love," and *' God so loved the world," -^ 
that is revelation. Not all the Bible is revelation ; 
not all the New Testament, even, is revelation; 
but this is a disclosure of the very mind and 
heart of God. Jesus gave it to us. John the 
Apostle said it, but Jesus lived it, and was it. 
Every other text of Scripture is a fragment, as 
an arc is a fragment of a circle; but this text 
sweeps the perfect round. There is in it more of 
God's infinity than there is in any other. The 
dullest mind must feel something of its illimitable 
suggestion. It gives one a deeper sense of infinite 
room and glory than even Wordsworth felt when 
greeted by some one with the words, " What, you 



38 The Religion of Hope. 

are stepping westward ? " in the splendor of a sun- 
set by Loch Katrine : — 

" I liked the greeting ; 't was a sound 
Of something without place or bound ; 
And seemed to give me spiritual right 
To travel through that region bright." 

Christianity has its root and reason of being in 
this truth, that God is love, and God loved the 
world. This is its cardinal article of faith. What- 
ever conditions or limitations have been put upon 
this revelation by the narrow thought and sym- 
pathies of men, and whatever contradictions of it 
have found place in theology, belong not 'to truth 
but to error. The worst heterodoxy is that which 
attempts, theoretically or practically, to lessen the 
breadth and force of this great communication, 
" God is love." This sentence, this truth in its 
simple grandeur, is the ground of every sweet and 
reasonable hope that can come to the heart of 
man ; in this truth is the solvent of every difficulty 
in the dark problem of human life. To receive 
this revelation, to believe and in some measure un- 
derstand it, and to be inspired, uplifted, and trans- 
formed by its power, is to become truly Christian. 

It is difficult to speak of the love of God, partly 
because it is so great and wonderful : speech is 
inadequate, and one is ashamed to limit that love 
by putting it into words. It is difficult, also, partly 
because of the sacred intimacy which it implies : 



The Love of God. 39 

our highest and hoHest thoughts often must wait 
for utterance because the clearest insight into the 
nature of God is accompanied by a diffidence that 
shrinks from the rudeness of words. But it is a 
joy, too, to speak of the love of God ; for all that 
is tenderest in human love, — in fatherhood and 
motherhood, — and all that is brightest and most 
inspiring in human hope, is here. God is the 
archetype of all that is most sweet and holy in 
human feeling and relationship. All pure love 
is a ray from this central sun, a stream from this 
primal fountain. Hence the very perception and 
experience of God's love urge us to expression. 

Who that has really loved has not felt this in- 
ward strife, — the restraint of love's diffidence con- 
tending with the impulse to speak. 

Again, it is difficult to speak of the love of God 
because the message must so often meet obstruc- 
tion in the minds of men. There is the cold cyn- 
icism of unbeHef; there is also the criticism that 
springs from ignorance, littleness and grossness of 
nature, selfishness, and even conventional ideas of 
God's sovereignty, justice, and holiness. Many 
a professed Christian aligns himself with the 
unbeliever in his objection to the more ardent 
expressions of the divine love. How few, even in 
this late time, after eighteen centuries of Chris- 
tianity, accept the simple, unqualified truth that 
" God is love " ! 

They say, "Yes, God Icves, but — " and their 



40 The Religion of Hope. 

prompt and numerous limitations of the love denies 
their confession. Theologians have dissected the 
divine nature, and they have found love indeed, but 
only as one of many elements, and not the chief 
element at that. " God loves men," they tell us, 
*' but his love cannot have its way until the wrath 
of his justice is appeased; and he gets wearied 
at last, and then love becomes spite, or awful, piti- 
less hate. As it is, God has favorites, — he loves 
Jacob, but hates Esau." 

Others, less blasphemous in their representations 
of God, yet maintain a thought of him which 
makes him less lovable than a large-minded, 
sweet-natured man. They build walls and fences, 
lest the divine mercy should become vagrant, and 
run out where it ought not to go. It is natural, 
and perhaps inevitable, that human nature should 
limit the divine by its very modes of conceiving the 
divine, — should make the horizon line a boundary 
wall ; but the horizon is only the blueness of trans- 
lucent ether, that stretches on to infinity. There 
is no limit to the motions of the infinite Spirit. 
When one has in mind the conceptions of God 
that were current in Boehme's time, he can scarcely 
wonder at the great mystic's saying, " Love is 
greater than God ! " 

This great word of revelation, the greatest word 
of all, is the Christian preacher's chief message to 
all to whom it is his privilege to minister. To the 
young, whose earnest e^es look out on life with 



The Love of God. 41 

brave hope and chivalrous ambition, this is his 
message to justify their hope, to sanctify their 
ambition, and to give inspiration and sustenance 
to their spirits through whatever conflict and toil 
and heartache and sorrow may await them; for 
this alone will make life victorious at last. 

To the aged and the weary this is his oft-uttered 
word of refreshment, as the burdens press heavier 
upon them and the shadows of approaching night 
grow longer and more chill. To those who are 
sick of sin and sinking down almost hopelessly in 
its thrall, this is his word of cheer by which they 
may find strength and will 

" to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." 

Many and various are the themes which he may 
present in the pulpit, but every sermon has one 
key-note, one dominant chord, and one source of 
inspiration ; and that is always the love of God for 
men. The theme is too large for the half-hour 
that I may take now. The most I can do is to 
announce it afresh with some suggestion of its per- 
sistent and vital relation to our life and thought. 

In the love of God we must find the formative 
and regulative principle of our philosophy, our 
theology, our ethics, and our art. 

Let us consider ^r^/, for a few minutes, the reve- 
lation which is given in the words, '* God is love," 
and '' God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 



42 The Religion of Hope. 

should not perish, but have eternal life ; " then we 
shall consider, at greater length, some of the infer- 
ences which we may draw from the revelation. 

That God loves the world because his nature is 
love, was and is a true revelation. It was a dis- 
closure to the minds and hearts of men of a truth 
at which they had not arrived by any process of 
reasoning or reflection. 

1. The statement was new, and the conception 
was new, — 

" the novel thought of God that lights the world." 

I do not know its parallel in ancient literature. 
Men believed in powerful gods, capricious gods, 
vindictive gods; and in some cases, as among the 
Hebrews, in a moral and just, and, to his own 
people, even merciful God ; but here is a new 
thought: God loves the world; he is interested 
in his creatures, and resolved on their perfect 
salvation. 

2. But the conception was as startling in its 
breadth as it was in its novelty. God is love ; that 
is his nature. The extent of the divine love is 
measured, not by man's desert, nor even by his 
need, but by the infinitude of the divine nature. 
And this love is for the world, — not for a favored 
nation, or tribe, or family, or sect, but for human- 
ity. Nothing must be suffered to turn our minds 
away from this fundamental truth. We may easily 
be misled by certain features of human experience. 



The Love of God. 43 

We must interpret history by the revelation of 
God's love, not interpret his love by the facts of 
history. Our knowledge is limited, and our vis- 
ion is yet dim and confused. God's love for the 
world gives us an interpretative 'principle. We 
may be misled by the providential election of cer- 
tain individuals and nations for specific service, 
and conclude that for them there is something 
special and exclusive in the divine regard. The 
Hebrew had a genius for religion, the Roman for 
administration, and the Greek for beauty and form. 
The first was chosen to serve the world through 
the sentiment of worship and the perception of 
righteousness, the second through the apprehen- 
sion and elaboration of law, and the third through 
the development of the intellect and the aesthetic 
sense. But these all were instrumental in the 
fulfilment of the divine purpose on behalf of hu- 
manity. Back of all the special vocations and 
particular ministries of these great peoples was 
the love of God, in which there is no respect of 
persons. The strong and the weak alike, the wise 
and the unwise, the just and the unjust, were the 
objects of the divine mercy. 

In the absolute catholicity of his sympathy with 
men, Jesus was revelatory of the divine love. He 
was revelatory also of the inexhaustibleness of 
that love. The cross is the supreme earthly sym- 
bol of the love that can be neither conquered nor 
diverted from its good intention. 



44 The Religio7t of Hope, 

" There 's a wideness in God's mercy 
Like the wideness of the sea ; 
There 's a kindness in his justice 
That is more than liberty. 

*' For the love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man's mind. 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind." 

And now, before I pass to a consideration of 
some of the inferences to be drawn from the 
fundamental truth which thus far we have been 
contemplating, let me meet some questions that 
may arise in your minds. 

In the first place, am I not ignoring other ele- 
ments in the divine nature which are essential to 
a true idea of God, and which condition the love 
of God? For example, it is commonly said that 
God's love is conditioned by his holiness, or the 
divine self-regard; by his justice, or the divine 
regard for law; and by his wisdom, or the divine 
regard for reason in dealing with dependent, weak, 
and sinful creatures. But all these attributes are 
manifestations or activities of the divine nature, 
which nature is perfect love. Love underlies and 
qualifies these, and the perfection of love insures 
the perfection of these. Because God is love, he 
will absolutely preserve his pure self-regard, will 
absolutely execute justice, and will absolutely ex- 
hibit and vindicate his wisdom. These are related 
to love as manifestation is related to nature, as 



The Love of God, 45 

action is related to law, and as method is related 
to purpose. 

In the second place, am I not belittling the work 
of Christ, even rendering it superfluous? But the 
work of Christ is not the cause of the divine 
love, nor is it a device whereby love may accom- 
plish its desire without breaking the integrity of 
the divine law. It is, on the contrary, a revelation 
of God with power, and a demonstration of the 
truth that " where sin abounded, grace did much 
more abound." Christ giving himself in utter self- 
sacrifice for humanity is not a substitute for the 
fulfilment of the divine law in human nature, but a 
means to that fulfilment. The whole process of 
human redemption is a revelation and result of the 
love which is absolute and eternal. This is true, 
if we hold with St. Paul that in Christ " dwelt all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily;" it would be 
true if Christ were only perfect man, for the entire 
significance of his life and death lies in the revela- 
tion of God which was made in and through him. 
There is a perfect correspondence between the 
words of Jesus, " I came not to do mine own will, 
but the will of him who sent me," and St. Paul's 
words, ** God was in Christ reconciling the world 
unto himself." 

What are some of the more important inferences 
which we may legitimately draw from this funda- 
mental truth, that the nature of God is perfect love, 
and that the will of God is the purpose of perfect 
love? 



46 The Religion of Hope. 

I. We find in this truth the reason and motive for 
creation. Our philosgphy of the world must base 
itself on the love of God, in order to be stable and 
satisfying. Because God is love, he creates, — ob- 
jectifying his 'thought in countless forms of being, 
and at once expressing and satisfying his own na- 
ture in the evolution of the cosmos. Once we were 
accustomed to think of creation • as a divine act 
accomplished in the remote past; but with wider 
knowledge of the world we have come to see that 
creation is not a single act, but a process that, be- 
ginning in the infinite past, is still going on. The 
ends of that process are not material, but moral. 
The physical universe is but the arena of the 
spiritual universe which is unfolding under the 
impulse of the Infinite Poet, — TrotT^r?;?, — or Maker. 
What we call redemption is but the fashioning of 
this spiritual universe. 

So for love God made the worlds, w^ove the 

glorious garment of star-sown sky, and prepared, 

through long ages of change, the habitable globe, 

whereon 

". . . at last arose the man 

"Who throve and branched from clime to clime, 
The herald of a higher race, 
And of himself in higher place, 
If so he types this work of time 

"Within himself, from more to more ; 
Or crowned with attributes of woe 
Like glories, move his course, and show 
That life is not an idle ore, 



The Love of God. 47 

" But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears. 
And battered with the shocks of doom 

" To shape and use." 

There is a truth in the teachings of the old 
theologians that God made the world for his own 
glory ; yet often this idea was so conceived and so 
put as to come perilously near a representation on 
a large scale of Nebuchadnezzar strutting about 
the royal palace in his capital city and boasting: 
*' Is not this great Babylon which I have built 
for the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my 
power and for the glory of my majesty? " Rightly 
and reverently apprehending the divine purpose in 
creation, we may truly say that God created all 
things for his own glory ; and, as his glory is the 
manifestation of his own perfect nature, his love 
supplies at once the motive and the end of the 
creation, which, as far as it lies within our ken, he 
is bringing to completion in the salvation of the 
world. 

2. A second Inference which we are bound to 
draw is: If God loves the world, it is not a hope- 
lessly bad world ; it is not a scene of defeat and 
wreck, — a fair beginning marred and ruined by 
a diabolical intelligence, — but a field of germs 
and promise, a sphere and opportunity for divine 
love's great achievement. An Oriental myth, ap- 
parently having no place in Hebrew literature 



48 The Religion of Hope. 

before the exile, and to which neither the prophets 
nor Jesus ever allude, in the hands of theologians 
and commentators and the great Puritan poet, 
Milton, has fixed in the general Christian mind an 
idea of the world which makes it the peculiar 
domain of Satan. But the love which created the 
world possesses and rules it. It is not the devil's 
world, but God's world ; and he is in it, bringing 
out the permanent good against the dark foil of 
the transient evil, promoting every right endeavor, 
conserving every right achievement, and suffering 
no pure purpose and aspiration to fail of their final 
aim. 

I know that many devoted Christians look upon 
the enterprise of God in Christ as mainly, if not 
entirely, an enterprise of rescue and repair; but 
I am persuaded that a deeper knowledge of God, 
and a clearer insight into his purpose, which a 
radical view of the divine nature as love must 
impart, v/ill change their conception of the world, 
and will give them new heart and hope as they 
grapple with the problems of present evil and 
sorrow and wrong. We toil not in an alien land ; 
we fight not in an enemy's country. The old 
hymn says truly, 

" We 're marching through Immanuel's ground ; " 
it may be, as the hymn continues, 

" To fairer worlds on high ; " 
but this world, sacred with holy memories, conse- 



The Love of God. 49 

crated by the footprints and by the cross of the 
Son of God, and rich with beauties of aspect and 
the meanings of human experience that forever 
incite poet and artist to their highest achieve- 
ments, is fair enough and great enough for the 
consummate flowering and fulfilment of a re- 
deemed and heavenly life. 

Whatever other worlds there may be, we know 
that here God may and does tabernacle with men, 
and here he may yet show glories of which 
prophet and seer have not dreamed. 

3. Another inference, closely joined with both 
the preceding, is: If God loves the world, he 
surely administers it for good, — not relatively, 
nor conditionally, but absolutely. I know I tread 
on ground here that is considered dangerous; but 
I walk fearlessly. With the Church of all the 
centuries I confess : " I believe in God the Father 
Almighty; " and against the narrow hope which, 
in their doubt and weakness, so large a number of 
her children have cherished, I proclaim the larger 
hope which she has never wholly lost since Jesus 
said : ** And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto myself." Against the pessi- 
mism of much of the theology and the common 
thought of Christians, I bear the testimony of that 
faith which bases itself immovably on the uni- 
versal and unconquerable love of God, '' who is 
the Saviour of all men, especially of them that 
believe." It is not faith, but fear, that holds us 

4 



50 The Religion of Hope. 

back from grasping the greatness of God's pur- 
pose and the certainty of his ultimate end in 
creation. 

The law of the world is progress along the line 
of a spiritual evolution. The life of the world is 
better to-day than it ever has been in the past. 
The love of God is our surety that it will grow 
better and better under the divine tuition and 
discipline, until even the Son of God *' shall see 
of the travail of his soul and be satisfied." But 
are there not pain and penalty and sin and death? 
Yes, but in and over these is the unconquerable 
love of God. But if God is invincible love, how 
can he punish? How can he maintain and vin- 
dicate his righteous law? Because he loves he 
will wield the lash of retributive penalty and kindle 
Gehenna fires to feed upon the impurities of human 
life. Pain is an instrument, not a finality. But 
this is love's triumph, that it will be known and 
welcomed at last. Because God loves the world, 
the kingdoms of the world will become the king- 
dom of our Lord and of his Christ. 

The faith which the love of God inspires, does 
not make light of sin ; it does not shut the eyes to 
the dark problem of evil ; it does not empty the 
future of terrors for the wilful sinner ; but it does 
stand fast in the trembling and awful, yet happy 
confidence, that God is supreme, and that divine 
love will have its way at last, and " every knee 
shall bow, and every tongue shall confess with 



The Love of God, 51 

thanksgiving that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory 

of God the Father." 

Day by day this larger hope, springing out of 

a deepening faith, is growing in the heart of the 

Church. Day by day the number increases of 

those who 

" grow too great 
For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade 
Before the unmeasured thirst for good : while peace 
Rises within them ever more and more. 
Such men are even now upon the earth, 
Serene amid the half-formed creatures round 
Who should be saved by them and joined with them." 

4. A final inference bears directly on the motive 
of the individual life. If God loves the world, then 
surely we should love it, and pour our lives into the 
endeavor for its salvation. God's motive must be 
our motive; love and love's labor must fill our 
hearts and hands. Here is the law of our life. So 
I beseech you, my friends, open your hearts to the 
great and precious truth of God's Word. God is 
love, and love is law. Let the perfect love of God 
fill you with invincible hope. In the struggle with 
sin, in the trial of pain and sorrow, in the bitterness 
of disappointment, in the anguish of life's seeming 
defeat, hold fast to the truth that God loves you, 
that he loves the world, and that he is saving the 
world and you, and bringing you surely, if to you 
it seem slowly, to the fulfilment of life and the per- 
fect realisation of his blessed will. Do not fear to 



52 The Religion of Hope. 

trust him utterly ; do not fail to obey him loyally ; 
and then, whatever may befall you here, you can 
say, with Whittier, — 

" I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air ; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond his love and care." 



III. 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



I WOULD not fix the time, the day, nor hour, 
When thou with all thine angels shalt appear ; 

When in thy kingdom thou shalt come with power; 
E'en now, perhaps, the promised day is near ! 

For though in slumber deep the world may lie, 
And e'en thy Church forget thy great command, 

Still, year by year thy coming draweth nigh ! 
And in its power thy kingdom is at hand. 

Not in some future world alone 't will be, 

Beyond the grave, beyond the bounds of time ; 

But on the earth thy glory we shall see. 
And share thy triumph, peaceful, pure, sublime. 

Jones Very. 



III. 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on 
earth. — Matt. vi. lo. 

TVJO saying of Christ's is more impressive, or 
-*- ^ more comprehensive in its implication of 
divine purpose, than that one immediately follow- 
ing the words : " Do ye, therefore, pray after this 
manner." The Lord's Prayer, as by universal con- 
sent it is called, is the prayer of the whole Christian 
Church. 

Without doing the language of Christ any vio- 
lence, we may say that in this brief utterance are 
expressed or implied all the essential elements of a 
spiritual faith, the essential principles of a spiritual 
life, and the essential pledge of a spiritual destiny. 
If there are doctrines, or precepts, that have been 
inculcated as Christian, which are inconsistent with 
this prayer, or have no unforced implication in this 
prayer, we may well question whether those doc- 
trines or precepts belong to the fundamental faith, 
or ethics, of Christianity. Certainly the entire 
teaching of Jesus, as reported by the Evangelists, 
is here, expressly or by implication. The progress 



56 The Religion of Hope. 

of eighteen hundred years suggests to the thought- 
ful mind no necessity of revising this simple yet 
all-inclusive petition. It stands to-day as the suc- 
cinct and comprehensive expression of the purest 
longing, the largest aspiration, and the loftiest ideal 
of humanity in its relation to God. It belongs to 
no sect, no nation, and no period of time, but to all 
the world and to all time. It is the perpetual wit- 
ness to the divine origin and spiritual destiny of 
man, as well as to the Being, Sovereignty, and 
Fatherhood of God. In the proportion that men 
make this prayer their own, they enter into 
and consciously appropriate the divine purpose 
which, through the long procession of the ages, 
is accomplishing, — 

" The one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

The clause which we are now to study is itself 
a petition so broad in its scope that, at times, all 
other forms of prayer seem superfluous. " Thy 
kingdom come," — it is the cry that Divine Father- 
hood may become manifest Sovereignty. " Thy 
will be done, as in heaven, so on earth," — it is the 
soul's confession of utter submission and homage 
and faith towards the Sovereign Fatherhood that 
rules the universe, and attains the ends for which 
the universe exists. This petition is the whole of 
prayer put into one strong, comprehensive sen- 
tence ; and this sentence is the heart of the Lord's 



The Kingdom of God. 57 

Prayer. What precedes it is pure expression of 
worship. What follows it is simple specialization 
of life's daily needs and daily duty. Everything 
that we can wish, or hope, or think of good is 
involved in the fulfilment of this all-embracing 
aspiration, " Thy kingdom come." 

I. In the first place, these words express much 
more than simple petition ; there is in them a con- 
fessiojt that the world is not what it might be. The 
kingdom of God, as the perfect embodiment and 
expression of divine order and beauty and benefi- 
cence, is not clearly manifest now. The world is 
the scene of much disorder. Men are ignorant, 
bestial, and selfish, in almost all conceivable de- 
grees of ignorance, bestiality, and selfishness. Love 
between man and man is far from being dominant. 
Sin and sorrow alike widely prevail. The history 
of human life is a history of progress ; but it is also 
a history of struggle and tempest and dark tragedy. 
Justice is not infallibly done ; for often the wicked 
prosper, and the good are oppressed. The evils of 
life are vast and manifold. Poverty and wretched- 
ness hold great multitudes in a bitter and hopeless 
bondage. Grief and pain, sooner or later, visit 
every heart. The best men fail not only of their 
ideal, but even of that which confessedly they 
might attain. 

Every human life is an illustration of incom- 
pleteness. Every conscience testifies of sin. Every 
soul is an embodied want. Society — the complex 



58 The Religion of Hope., 

organism in which individuals are held in a com- 
mon life and vitally joined in the fulfilment of a 
common destiny — is the defective, disorganized, 
and suffering individual " writ large." 

Humanity, one in origin, one in essential nature, 
and one in the great obligations of the moral life, 
is yet a congeries of diverse and more or less con- 
flicting races and nationalities. Some of these races 
are far advanced in civilization ; others still linger 
on the dark borders of barbarism ; and others still 
abide in a condition scarcely raised above that of the 
brutes. As, even in the nations farthest advanced 
in intelligence and virtue, the law of love is still 
imperfectly fulfilled, and individual strives with 
individual and class strives with class in selfish 
competition, so between the various nations and 
tribes of men there is perpetual jealousy and mis- 
trust, and threat of conflict. At this moment the 
great powers of Europe, armed to the teeth, main- 
tain a precarious peace. 

That the general moral condition of the world 
is better now than it ever has been in the past, will 
be admitted, I think, by the most cautious critic. 
But, putting the best possible construction on all 
that we learn of the life of humankind, we must 
confess that the world is still very far from that 
condition of intelligence, virtue, harmony and good- 
will, which is involved in the least imaginative and 
least aspiring conception of the kingdom of God. 

The Christian heart, in the very cry, *' Thy king- 



The Kingdom of God. 59 

dom come," confesses, not the ruin of the world, 
not the failure, the defeat, but the incomplete, the 
still waiting fulfilment, of God's will in the world. 
The superficial optimist who declares that all that 
is is the best, and obstinately shuts his eyes to the 
evil and want and wretchedness and sin which 
everywhere appear in human life, is unable to ap- 
prehend the deep meaning of the Christian prayer. 

Let the truth be faced bravely. The world is 
not what it should be, nor what it might be. There 
is evil, hideous and vast. " The whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain," waiting for a de- 
liverance which has not yet come. The soul does 
face the truth in uttering this prayer, '' Thy king- 
dom come." 

2. But the acknowledgment of incompleteness, 
disorder and sin in the world, is accompanied by 
an expression of trust in the divine righteousness 
and good purpose. This trust is not broken down 
by the ever-present spectacle — which to the finite 
eye is so appalling — of defect in the present con- 
dition and apparent tendency of human life. The 
perception of the divine excellence, which the 
devout mind increasingly attains, sharpens rather 
than lessens the contrast between that which is 
and that which ought to be. The more one knows 
of God, the more clearly he sees the imperfections 
both of the individual man and of human soci- 
ety. But the increasing revelation of defect in 
human life, mediated by increasing perception of 



6o The Religion of Hope. 

the divine ideal, begets neither despair nor re- 
sentment. The behef in God, which this prayer 
expresses, saves us from pessimism. As an un- 
flinching recognition of the facts of Hfe destroys 
the superficial optimism which says that all that 
is is the best, so a living faith in God destroys 
the equally superficial pessimism which says that 
whatever is is worst. Faith in God involves such 
a sense of the divine goodness and righteousness 
as assures the heart of the ultimate triumph of 
good throughout the whole empire of God. The 
cry of passionate desire, " Thy kingdom come," is 
immediately followed by the word of patient and 
hopeful resignation, '* Thy will be done, as in 
heaven, so on earth." This resignation is not a 
passive and unaspiring content with life and the 
world as they are, but it is a faithful acceptance of 
God's sovereignty, and God's purpose, and God's 
method. It is an expectant and trustful submis- 
sion to the supreme will, which is felt to be both 
absolutely good, and, in its own time, absolutely 
efficient. 

" Fierce though the fiends may fight, 
And long though the angels hide, 
I know that truth and right 
Have the universe on their side." 

The spirit of loyal obedience to God is joined with 
uncomplaining endurance of what seems the hard- 
ness of his will and the slowness of his action. 
The imperfection and disorder of the world 



The Kingdom of God. 61 

touch all of us. Each of us has to endure, not 
only his own individual weakness and sinfulness 
and disappointment and pain, but each of us has 
to bear also the strain and shock of the multi- 
form wrong that works in society about us. We are 
involved in a common lot. We suffer innumer- 
able ills that are not the result of our individual 
imperfection or fault. Other men's sins scourge 
us; other men's ignorance hinders and burdens 
us ; other men's woes aggravate our sorrow. 
There seems, sometimes, a hideous wrong in that 
solidarity of society by which the innocent are 
made to suffer with the guilty; but that very 
solidarity is the necessary condition of the world- 
wide salvation which God is accomplishing. By 
it we are made participant in vast benefits that 
are not the result of our individual effort or 
merit. Other men's virtues enrich and strengthen 
us; other men's knowledge and insight make our 
path clearer and our load lighter; other men's 
joys mitigate our sorrows; and other men's pangs 
expiate our guilt. There is a vast beneficent side 
to this relation in which we are bound to the 
totality of human life. 

Moreover, often wrong appears to be triumphant 
because of the limitation of our view. We must 
walk by faith and not by sight, because, as yet, our 
sight is dim. In a true sense, indeed, faith in God 
is sight. If we really beheve in God, and in that 
belief say, *'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done 



62 The Religion of Hope, 

on earth as it is in heaven," then, in so far as we 
make this prayer truly, we rise to God's horizon, 
and we see things from his point of view. Recog- 
nizing the evil in the world, and in our own lives, 
we yet affirm that the evil of the world is transient; 
that what appears evil is often only ** good in the 
making; " that behind the apparent disorder is a 
growing order; that goodness is at the heart of 
the universe ; that '' righteousness and judgment 
are the habitation of God's throne; " and that not 
the present state, considered by itself, is best, but 
that God's will is best, and that God's will is getting 
itself done in sure, if seemingly slow, ways. 

Such affirmation of faith the heart makes that, 
without passive content, is patient, that without 
despair is resigned, that, while holding fast to 
the ideal, yet cheerfully and trustfully accepts the 
real, and amid its forbidding facts maintains the 
happy assurance of the good that is and is to be. 

3. But still more than it expresses acknowledg- 
ment of the evil that is, and resignation to the will 
of God in our present lot, does this prayer express 
an aspiration and an ideal. The largeness of true 
Christianity is in this prayer. Jesus always con- 
templates humanity, as well as the individual. Of 
all the apostles, St. Paul most closely follows him 
in this. As the salvation of the individual soul is 
not a mere rescue from penalty, but a process of 
spiritual quickening and unfolding toward '' the 
perfect man," so the salvation of the world is not 



The Kingdom of God. 63 

a meagrely successful struggle with a great catas- 
trophe, — a life-boat expedition among the helpless 
and sinking victims of a wreck, — but the spiritual 
quickening of humanity and its unfolding toward 
the perfect society, which is the realized and mani- 
fest kingdom of God. 

The process of the salvation of the world is a 
process of divine inspiration, and discipline, and 
development. Supernatural in its origin, both be- 
cause of the supernatural source from w^hich it 
springs and the supernatural personalities with 
which it deals, the salvation of humanity is super- 
natural in its whole course. It is supernatural, not 
in the sense of mere miracle or of arbitrary disre- 
gard of natural law, but in the only true and large 
sense, that it is a spiritual process of which the 
natural order is the basis. The Christian ideal is 
the rule of the spirit over the flesh ; the fulfilment 
and coronation of nature with the supernature ; 
the complete emergence of man from ignorance 
and sin and weakness into wisdom and holiness 
and power; the perfection of the individual in and 
through the perfection of society; and the per- 
fect manifestation of the Creative and Immanent 
Life in the nature, relations, and activities of 
the creature, — that is, the glorious revelation of 
God in a spiritual cosmos, in which are gathered 
up all the results of man's entire history, and which, 
in its order and beauty and blessedness, fulfils the 
prophetic intimations of divine teaching and human 



64 The Religion of Hope. 

experience. In a word, the Christian ideal is the 
kingdom of God ; and the kingdom of God is not 
a new creation, save as the flowering and fruitage 
of the divine purpose in the old are new. It is 
not a state superimposed on the world from above, 
but the world redeemed, purified, disciplined, and 
spiritualized, and so carried up to a higher plane. 
There is no break in the continuity of God's 
working. 

The Christian aspiration for the coming of the 
kingdom of God is, then, an aspiration for the 
advancement and completion of a process now 
going on. That process is far more positive than 
it is negative. It includes the judgment and de- 
struction of evil, but still more the affirmation and 
fulfilment of the good. The kingdom of God as 
the perfect ideal covers the whole field of life. It 
means the salvation of the individual man by the 
disclosure of his individual relations to God, his 
individual guilt and need, and his individual capa- 
cities for truth and righteousness, and by the regen- 
eration of the individual spirit, that this disclosure 
may have at once its justification and its true issue 
in individual peace and joy, and growth in all 
the graces and powers of the spiritual life. 

But the spiritual life is not exclusive of the 
natural life. That is, the man Is not removed, by 
the awakening of his spirit, from the conflicts and 
duties and discipline of daily experience. In so far 
as the kingdom of God is the salvation of the in- 



The Kingdom of God. 65 

dividual, it is the consecration and elevation of the 
whole life of the individual. It involves all of the 
needs, obligations, activities, aspirations, and possi- 
bilities that pertain to man from the beginning of 
his existence. It exhibits the real significance of 
all his material and intellectual relations and expe- 
riences. It co-ordinates with the high aims of the 
awakened spirit, the daily business, the domestic 
ties, the political functions, — all, indeed, that 
belongs to the natural and proper life of man in 
the world. The kingdom of God, therefore, in so 
far as it has realization in the individual man, 
means better life, higher aspiration, greater skill as 
a worker, greater range and power as a thinker, 
richer culture of mind and person, a tenderer grace 
in the home, a finer morality in trade, a nobler 
ambition in society, a more scrupulous unselfish- 
ness and a larger comprehension both of rights 
and duties in politics, a wider horizon in views of 
life, a broader sympathy with mankind, a quick- 
ened sense of kinship with his fellows, a more ca- 
pacious charity, and a solider strength of character. 
It means, in a word, the consecration, enlargement, 
and many-sided improvement of the individual 
man, here and now. There is no arbitrary post- 
ponement of perfection to a future state, but a 
daily growth and endeavor toward the perfection 
in the attainment of which the future is inseparably 
linked with all the past, and thus the divine educa- 
tion of the human soul is fulfilled. 

5 



66 The Religion of^Hope, 

But the kingdom of God means also the salva- 
tion of society in its organic life. God is related to 
men, but he is related also to mankind. The cor- 
porate life of humanity is not less real than the 
life of the single personality. The salvation of 
society is the salvation of the individual extended 
throughout the sphere of his manifold relations. 
It includes, then, the regeneration of the social 
personality, the quickening and enlargement of 
the social intelligence, the purification and refine- 
ment of the social character, the development of 
all the social activities, and the realization in social 
forms of the spiritual graces of love, truth, and 
righteousness. 

The separation which many make between the 
redemption of the individual and the redemption 
of society is fatal to any true conception, as it 
would be fatal, were it actual, to any true realiza- 
tion, of the kingdom of God. By that separation 
the industries and arts and politics of men are left 
out of the spiritual realm. A powerful disorganiz- 
ing force is thus set in motion in society. Men 
attempt to live a Christian life in the church and a 
secular life in the world. They are overpowered 
by the world because of the very weakness which 
their misconception breeds. There is no sacred- 
ness attaching to the church, which ought not also 
to attach to the chamber of commerce. There is 
no honor that marks the bond of brother with 
brother in *' the communion of saints," which 



The Kingdom of God. 6 J 

ought not also to mark the bond of employer with 
employed, of seller with buyer, and of producer 
with consumer. There is no ground in Christian 
thought for the sort of distinction which perpetu- 
ally is made between the sacred and the secular. 
The kingdom of God is all-inclusive. It gathers 
up in its significance the whole of life. It means 
"better laws, better social customs, better industrial 
relations, better economic principles, better public 
works, better amusements, better sanitary condi- 
tions, better streets and conveyances and houses, 
better municipal administration, better art, better 
schools, better newspapers, better books, better 
everything. Its claims are absolutely inclusive, 
and its consecration spreads, like subtle perfume, 
everywhere. 

In this large conception of the kingdom of God 
the individual Christian life receives a great en- 
largement. The aspiration of the individual soul 
for a fuller experience of divine grace becomes an 
aspiration for the suffusion of society with the 
quickening tides of the Spirit. The longing of 
the individual soul for holiness becomes a longing 
for the spiritual health of humanity. The selfish- 
ness that so readily and so often creeps into the 
religious life to contract arid corrupt it is shut out. 
The individual lives in the widened consciousness. 
of his wide relationship. Love becomes operative 
in the most secret motions of his spirit. His sym- 
pathies reach out for the world, and his thinking 



68 TJie Religion of Hope. 

broadens to the breadth of his sympathy. His 
h'fe is deepened and enlarged on every side. The 
social significance of Christianity, possessing his 
mind, makes his whole nature susceptible to the 
social forces of Christianity. He escapes isolation. 
He is emancipated from the bonds, not of convic- 
tion, but of sectarianism and partisanship ; and the 
ties that bind him to his fellows become attractions 
constraining him to all beneficent and philanthropic 
endeavor. 

The individual soul, under the Christian idea, 
types the society, the nation, the race. The 
supreme law of the individual life is love : ** Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and 
with all thy strength, . . . and . . . thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself. On these two command- 
ments hang all the law and the prophets." Love 
is thus the ground of ethics, the spring of motive, 
and the regnant principle of all action. It is the 
law and the pervading spirit of the kingdom of 
God. It is thus the deep-lying bond of social 
unity. The aspiration for the coming of the king- 
dom of God is an aspiration for the universal rule 
of love, and the diffusion throughout the world of 
those benefits of comfort, peace, knowledge, lib- 
erty, righteousness and joy, which love brings in 
its bosom. This means that unselfish love shall 
be the motive in labor, in trade, in invention, in 
teaching, in governing, in everything. 



TJie Kingdom of God. 6g 

Here is the ideal, so beautiful, and, in the face 
of actual human life, seemingly so unreal. But 
the unattained is ever the unreal to the dull mind 
and sordid spirit. The soul that believes in God 
believes in the fulfilment of God's purpose, that 
is, in the realization of the kingdom of God. The 
day may seem far off, but it is coming. The uni- 
versal reign of love, creating new economics, a 
new commerce, new politics, a new social life, sup- 
planting greed of gain with passion for service, 
and mutual competition with mutual helpfulness, 
unreal as it seems to us, immersed in the struggle 
and held by the habits and ruled by the ideas of 
to-day, is yet the destined result and fulfilment of 
the centuries and ages of divine teaching and dis- 
cipline. The brooding life of God in the world 
will beget all the glory and blessedness of which 
the rapt seer has caught the symbol in the New 
Jerusalem, — the city that lieth four-square, — the 
type of perfected social organization. Every time 
this prayer is sincerely uttered, there is affirmation 
of the faith that grasps the coming realization of 
God's purpose, and of the pledge which is made 
by the Son of God in giving this prayer and giving 
himself on the cross of utter self-sacrifice for the 
salvation of the world. 

4. Thus, finally, this prayer expresses a supreme 
hope and a supreme endeavor. The grand end of 
life, from the Christian point of view, is the king- 
dom of God. In this hope are gathered up all 



JO The Religio7i of Hope. 

high and sweet hopes that blossom in the heart of 
the man of good-will and in the heart of society. 
In this endeavor are included all right endeavors 
of individuals and communities. Materially, every 
invention that gives man a larger and easier mas- 
tery over nature, and liberates his spirit a little 
more from the necessity of continual drudging, 
promotes the coming of the kingdom. Intellec- 
tually, every contribution to man's knowledge of 
the earth, the history of the race, and the nature 
and possibilities of his own soul, and every dif- 
fusion of knowledge through a wider circle of men, 
promotes the coming of the kingdom. Morally 
and spiritually, every deed done, every thought 
uttered, every sacrifice made for the emancipa- 
tion of men from ignorance, sin, vice, and wretch- 
edness, and every new infusion of faith, hope, 
and love into human hearts, promotes the com- 
ing of the kingdom. All right endeavors are co- 
ordinated and carried forward to their true end by 
this conception of the kingdom. The pulse of the 
divine love, expressing itself in enterprises of phi- 
lanthropy and Christian missions, beats in this 
hope. The force of the divine purpose, recreating 
the social order of men in righteousness, works in 
this endeavor. 

Under the rule of this idea of the kingdom of 
God, the co-working of man with God becomes 
a practical, daily experience. Religious activity 
loses in peculiarity, and gains in sincerity and 



The Kingdom of God. 71 

breadth and power. The church discovers its true 
and universal function. Its mission relates it to 
the whole of life, and not merely to individual 
men and women ; and so its function is not merely 
that of an isolated witness of divine truth, — a 
Pharos flashing its light across a dark and tem- 
pestuous sea, — but that of an embodied love and 
life, bearing the sweet contagion of universal health 
into all the members of the great race-body which 
is meant to be the body of Christ. 

How much it means, then, to utter this prayer, 
" Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in 
heaven, so on earth." It means that we are com- 
mitted to that faith, that aspiration, that hope 
and that endeavor which have their end and fulfil- 
ment in the redemption of the world. It means 
that we are set to the task of living the individual 
life of trust and obedience and love. It means 
that we are seeking knowledge and power and 
grace for the service of our fellowmen. It means 
that we are practising in all our business and 
pleasure the principles of the gospel of Christ. 
It means that we are helping those about us to a 
true knowledge of God and a life in the spirit. It 
means that we are consecrating the commonest 
industries with a loving temper. It means that 
we are resisting the sharp competitions and cor- 
roding jealousies and destructive selfishness which 
still so widely and hurtfully pervade the life of 
men. It means that we are living in the thought 



72 The Religion of Hope. 

of our relations to humanity, and in our aspira- 
tions, our longings, our sufferings, and our prayers, 
are carrying with us the need and sorrow and sin 
of the whole world. It means, in a word, that by 
word and deed, by desire and purpose, we are 
seeking in ourselves, in our homes, in society, and 
in the world, the fulfilment of our prayer, — the 
ever more perfect reign of love, and thus the 
realization of the kingdom of God. 

" Say not, the struggle naught availeth, 
The labor and the wounds are vain, 
The enemy faints not nor faileth, 

And as things have been they remain. 

" If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars. 
It may be, in yon smoke concealed, 
Your comrades chase e'en now the flyers. 
And but for you possess the field. 

" For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
Far back, through creeks and inlets making. 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 

" And not by eastern windows only 

When morning comes, comes in the light ; 
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly. 
But, westward, look ! the land is bright." 



IV. 

THE COMING OF CHRIST. 



I SING the Birth was born to-night, 
The Author both of life and light ; 

The angels so did sound it : — 
And like the ravished shepherds said, 
Who saw the hght, and were afraid, 

Yet searched, and true they found it. 

The Son of God, the eternal King, 
That did us all salvation bring, 

And freed the soul from danger ; 
He whom the whole world could not take, 
The Word, which heaven and earth did make, 

Was now laid in a manger. 

What comfort by him do we wia, 
Who made himself the price of sin, 

To make us heirs of glory ! 
To see this Babe, all innocence, 
A martyr born in our defence ! — 

Can man forget this story ? 

Ben Jonson. 



IV. 

THE COMING OF CHRIST.i 

Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. — i Tim. i, 15. 

^ I ^HIS is part of an autobiographical note, for 
■^ St. Paul goes on to say: ** of whom I am 
chief: howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, 
that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth 
all his long-suffering;" yet it states a primary fact 
and a fundamental truth of Christianity. The fact 
is the coming of Jesus ; the truth is that Jesus 
came to save the world from sin. I ask you 
to consider this truth with me now, because of 
its appropriateness to the season, and because it 
represents so large and vital a part of Christian 
teaching and preaching. 

The Christmas festivities are at hand ; we cele- 
brate the birth of Jesus Christ. Whatever may be 
our private reasons for observing the Christmas 
festival, the true deep reason and motive lie in this 
fact, that nearly nineteen hundred years ago there 
was born of a lowly Jewish mother, in a little town 
in Palestine, a baby who was known as the child of 

1 A Christmas sermon. 



^6 The Religion of Hope. 

Joseph and Mary, and whose name was called 
Jesus, which means " Saviour." Is it not an ex- 
traordinary thing? Nations instinctively celebrate 
the birthdays of their own heroes and benefactors; 
but all nations of Christendom celebrate the birth- 
day of a Jew ! The history of the past eighteen 
centuries is indissolubly associated with the name 
of Jesus. No other name is so woven into its very 
texture. A few years ago, in Paris, one might see 
everywhere, carved on the stone walls of public 
buildings, wrought into fabrics, and graven on 
monuments, the letter N. It was the mark and 
sign of the emperor. The name of Jesus is indel- 
ibly stamped on the civilization and inextricably 
woven into the literature of the world. 

It is because, in some way, the weal of humanity 
is inseparably joined with the name, the hfe, the 
teachings, the deeds, and the personality of Jesus; 
it is because in Jesus, as in no one else, the world 
finds a revelation of God and a '* promise and 
potency" of salvation; it is because, in a word, 
men discover in Jesus, not a Jew, nor an Oriental, 
nor a mere genius, nor a philanthropist, nor a 
martyr, but a Son of Man, who is also the Son of 
God, in whom the spiritual world visibly and pal- 
pably discloses itself for the enlightenment, com- 
fort, and emancipation of mankind, — that the 
birthday of Jesus has become the great, gladsome 
festival of all Christendom. 

It is a truism, perhaps, but one that must be 



The Coming of Christ. 77 

uttered again and again, that man's deepest needs 
are spiritual. More urgent than the hunger for 
bread, deeper than the need of industrial and polit- 
ical liberty, when once men awaken, is their hun- 
ger for that which feeds the heart, and their need 
of the liberty of the spirit. Love and truth and 
righteousness have a value greater than any mate- 
rial possessions ; and until these are found, an in- 
curable unrest cankers the human soul. 

Jesus Christ meets the deepest needs, he brings 
an answer even to the unexpressed wants, of the 
human spirit. In him the soul's cry for God, its 
longing for peace, and its. capacity for hope, find a 
response and supply not found in any one else. 

But it is not possible, save by a violent dislo- 
cation, to separate the spiritual from the intellec- 
tual and the material. All these are interwoven. 
Men have tried to separate them ; especially have 
they tried to separate the religious from the secu- 
lar, and the life of the spirit from the life of the 
senses and passions. In so far as they have been 
successful in this effort they have marred the 
integrity and hindered the completion of life. 
Robert Browning, the poet of life in its totality, 

wrote, — 

" Not soul helps flesh more now 
Than flesh helps soul." 

"Flesh," that is the totality of the life of the 
senses, and " soul," that is the totality of the life of 
the spirit, belong in a single unity of personal 



yS The Religion of Hope. 

being. In the true life, pleasure, study, industry, 
and worship are co-operant. There is nothing in- 
congruous between the various powers and activ- 
ities of the normal man. 

But Browning's word applies also to society, — 
the individual man writ large. The essential wants 
of any one man are the essential wants of hu- 
manity. Form and manifestation are multifold ; 
but the race is wholly one in its fundamental affini- 
ties and needs. Truth, righteousness, love — in 
one word, God, is the answer to the deepest 
human aspiration and desire and need. 

Jesus is related to all the various phases of human 
life. He is in touch with childhood and age, with 
manhood and womanhood, with the rich and the 
poor, with the ignorant and the wise, with the good 
and the bad, — that is, he is in touch with their hu- 
manity. At every point of actual human nature he 
is in sympathetic contact. 

Other great men are insular ; Jesus is universal. 
If he seem insular to us, it is because we do not 
know him ; he has been misrepresented, and men 
have sought to shut up the gracious wealth of his 
personality within the narrow lines of dogma. His 
relation to human life is one of entire understand- 
ing and sympathy, and of beneficent power and 
intention. His purpose toward mankind is a pur- 
pose of salvation in its full scope. 

Before he was born it was said of him, ** His 
name shall be called Jesus, for he shall save his 



The Coming of Christ. 79 

people from their sins." His people is humanity, 
for he claimed and claims the world. Looking 
back over the centuries since Jesus was a baby in 
Bethlehem, we see that his unvarying real relation 
to men is that of Saviour. The Evangelist's word 
is the statement of prophecy and expectation ; St. 
Paul's word is the statement of experience. Out 
of his own experience the apostle testified : " Faith- 
ful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
sinners." This is the continuous testimony of 
experience, — the experience of all who have really 
known Jesus. Men have speculated about him, 
debated about him, desiccated his teachings into 
dogmas, and turned his words of love into shibbo- 
leths; but they have not known him until they 
have known him as a Saviour from sin and unrest 
and despair. He brought to the world no scheme 
of salvation full of conditions and equipped with 
a vast machinery of ordinances and sacrifices and 
ritual. He simply testified of God, and exhibited 
truth in a character of perfect sweetness and sym- 
metry and strength, and lived in utter and uncon- 
strained subjection to the law of love. His life 
was at once a sermon and a service, all the mean- 
ing and end of which were salvation. 

Because Jesus thus relates himself, not to parties 
and churches, but to humanity as a divine-human 
Saviour, and in that relation is concerned with the 
totality of human life, we celebrate his birth. In 



8o The Religion of Hope. 

celebrating the birth of Christ we re-announce and 
re-emphasize the purpose for which he came into 
the world. In the serious heart, beneath all the 
festivity and the interchange of gifts which so fitly 
and dehghtfuUy mark the Christmas season, is this 
truth, — Jesus Christ came into the world to save 
sinners, and to save them from their sins. If we 
can only take in the full scope of this truth, we 
shall find the solution of life's darkest problems 
and the spring of inexhaustible hope and joy. 

That word " sin " is a most interesting word. It 
means '^ missing the mark," therefore erring, wan- 
dering, going wrong. It is a very comprehensive 
word, and there is in it a suggestion of large ten- 
derness. To sin is to miss the mark, to go astray 
from the true aim of life. To fail of doing the 
right and of attaining the good is included, as well 
as doing evil. 

Sin is always a blunder. How much of sin we 
can see to be just that. The ignorance, the ani- 
malism, the blindness, and the selfishness of men 
lie at the root and are the source of specific acts of 
sinfulness. These are only symptomatic of con- 
dition; and that condition is not one of inherent 
malicious depravity. The " total depravity " that 
figures so largely in the Calvinistic theology, if it 
exist at all, is not a primary, nor even a secondary 
condition of human nature; it is an advanced stage 
of development in the wrong direction. The most 
suggestive examples of depravity in the New 



The Coming of Christ. 8i 

Testament are not found among the " publicans 
and harlots," but among the '* Pharisees." On the 
whole, the New Testament, at least the Gospels, 
deal gently with sin. This is true particularly 
of Jesus. How patient he is with human nature! 
illustrating the Psalmist's saying : '' Like as a father 
pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that 
fear him ; for he knoweth our frame, he remem- 
bereth that we are dust ! " 

The one form of sin which Jesus smites as with 
a thunderbolt is the self-righteousness that reveals 
itself in pride, in censoriousness, in hardness and 
pitilessness of heart, and in self-induced spiritual 
blindness, joined with the pretence of eminent 
sanctity and claims of infallible religious authority. 
This is what the law calls laesa majestas ; Phari- 
saism is a violation of the majesty of divine love. 
The Pharisees alone Jesus denounced. There 
seems to be no other way to deal with the Pharisee 
than to shatter him with a lightning stroke of 
indignation and judgment. To the publican and 
harlot, the victim of passions and vices and igno- 
rance, how gentle and patient he was ! The inci- 
dent of the woman " that was a sinner," at the 
house of Simon the Pharisee, and the parable of 
the prodigal son, are representative and revelatory 
of Christ's attitude toward sinners ; and we are 
warranted by Christ's teaching in believing that 
these are representative and revelatory of God's 
attitude toward sinners. 

6 



82 The Religion of Hope, 

How true it is that all sinning is a missing the 
mark ! It is turning aside into the wrong way ; it 
is missing or defeating one's true purpose in the 
world ; it is failing to attain the real good of life. 
Does not the sinner of every sort miss the mark? 
There is no value in any end that is separated 
from integrity and purity and faith and unselfish- 
ness. The term " sin " is inclusive of the thousand 
wrong deeds that we do; but, more than that, 
it characterizes our generic course in evil. It 
includes disposition as well as act; condition as 
well as conduct; and the omission of the good we 
might do and attain as well as the commission of 
positive evil. 

Now Jesus came into the world, came forth 
from God, to save sinners, — not primarily from 
penalty, but from their sins ; to turn those who, in 
ignorance or selfishness, were missing the mark, 
into the right way; to quicken them with the life 
and enrich them with the wisdom of God ; to 
beget them anew in spiritual disposition. "' To as 
many as received him he gave the right to become 
children of God " : that is, the prodigal, restored, 
becomes, in spirit as well as in name, the son; the 
" lost " is " found," and he that was " dead " lives 
again. In a word, Jesus came to save men from 
sin by developing in them, through their faith and 
love, the righteousness of God. 

We may phrase it as we please, emphasize this 
feature or that of the process which in the language 



The Coming of Christ. 83 

of theology is called "the plan of salvation;" but 
this is the great aim and constant endeavor of Jesus : 
to save men from their sins by the power of the 
divine life in them, communicated through him 
who came that they might have life, and have it 
abundantly, and thus to make of them new men, 
spiritual men, in whom God's purpose should 
move toward its fair fulfilment, — men who should 
no longer miss the mark, but speed or climb 
toward the goal of " the perfect man, the meas- 
ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 

The philosophy of religious experience, from the 
Christian point of view, is thus put by St. Paul : *' If 
any man be in Christ he is a new creature." He is 
not simply the old creature newly placed, carrying 
over across the chasm of an emotional paroxysm 
all his old prejudices, ignorances, enmities, un- 
charitablenesses, and the like ; nor another crea- 
ture, the result of some sudden down-rush of 
magical transforming power, — but a new crea- 
ture, because touched with new life from God, 
newly adjusted within to the divine law, newly 
awakened to love, charged with a new purpose, 
and inspired with a new hope. 

Men used to ask the young Christian, or the 
man just awakened to spiritual life : '' What evi- 
dence have you that you have experienced a 
change of heart? " — a most unnecessary and often 
unreal question. Life is evidenced by its product, 
not by the profession, which often advertises its 



84 The Religion of Hope. 

counterfeit. The man whom the Son of God has 
quickened to new life is busy living along the new 
lines of purpose and aspiration, too busy to in- 
dulge in morbid introspection. If the question really 
arises as to whether one is a Christian or not, it is 
answered by one's manifest affinities with Christ in 
serving men. The dull and ignorant servant girl 
perceived that she was different from what she had 
been because, now, she '' swept under the mats." 
That meant a finer honesty in her daily life. The 
test is good. You men to whom Christ has come, 
how about the daily transactions in the market 
and the daily conduct in the home? Salvation 
reveals itself in a nobler purpose, a purer virtue, a 
gentler spirit, and a richer unselfishness in the daily 
living. 

As '' sin " is so comprehensive a word, including 
all error, failure, and defect, as well as all positive 
maleficence, including the entire imperfection of 
man, so, on the other hand, *' salvation " is a com- 
prehensive word, including all aspiration and pur- 
pose that reach toward a better life and character, 
all progression and fulfilment of the man who is 
now but germinal, all experience of the unfolding 
and perfecting life of the child of God. It is so 
much more than the dismissal of a convicted but 
pardoned culprit, so much more than an escape 
from deserved and imminent punishment, that as 
one enters into its deep meaning he forgets that 
this was any part of it, save as he can never for- 



The Coming of Christ. 85 

get the sweet joy of forgiveness which comes to 
him in that consciousness of God into which Christ 
brings him. Salvation becomes the achieving of a 
hfe, the fulfilment of a divine destiny. 

In the accomplishment of his purpose of salva- 
tion Jesus relates himself both to the individual 
soul and to society. When we contemplate what 
he does for this or that particular man, we see but 
one aspect of his work. The creation of the new- 
man is no more his work than is the creation of 
the new society. '* The kingdom of God " is the 
regenerated society, as " the child of God " is the 
regenerated individual soul. 

Society is deep in sin. It, too, misses the mark 
in many and grievous ways. Through the igno- 
rance' and selfishness of men and classes of men, 
it fails to attain true health and order and peace. 
It is said, sometimes, that poverty and disease 
and wretchedness are inevitable and even neces- 
sary, and therefore, in a sense, normal in human 
society. But surely this is as mistaken as it 
would be to say that the defects of disposition 
and temper, and even the positive sins, that mark 
many a Christian man are necessary and normal. 
Jesus came to save the unit, the individual man, 
from his sins ; but he came also to save the sum, 
the body of which the individual is a member, 
from its sins. Failure to see this truth, that the 
divine purpose in^ the Christ is organic and com- 
prehensive, as well as personal and individual, has 



86 The Religion of Hope. 

often made Christians obstructive of social reform, 
or at least has made them lethargic and neglect- 
ful of their duty. They have limited the work of 
Christ to an individual redemption which affects 
condition rather than character, and which has its 
main, and often its only appreciable, result in eter- 
nity, delimited from time by a final and universal 
judgment day; while for the evil and disorder of 
the present they have sought a certain compensa- 
tion in a future heaven. But the true heaven is the 
blossom and fruitage of earth ; it is the harmony 
and crescendo of chords awakened in time; it is 
** the perfect round " of '' the broken arcs " that 
are slowly shaping here. 

The problem of the salvation of the world is all 
essentially in the problem of the salvation of a single 
soul, and the single unfolded and spiritualized man 
is the prophecy and pledge of '' the new heaven 
and the new earth." All the progress of mankind 
is but fulfilment of God's purpose personally re- 
vealed in Jesus Christ. 

See how Jesus has touched and changed society 
by his experience and work, and by the force of 
his personality even more than by his teachings. 
As the Baby of Bethlehem he has consecrated in- 
fancy. As the Child of Mary he has consecrated 
womanhood and maternity. As the Son of Man, 
embodying the divine thought and love in a life 
that is utterly divine, without losing one trait or 
element of its perfect humanness, he has raised 



The Coming of Christ. 87 

the world's ideal of character and given a new law 
to human society. His self-sacrifice was no mere 
dramatic display, but a practical application of the 
law of love, which has made the cross the per- 
petual symbol of the glory and the invincible 
power of love. Slowly men are learning this law 
and the meaning of the cross. Life is not meant 
to be a perpetual strife and mutually hurtful com- 
petition, but a fellowship, a mutual service, a strife 
for one another instead of a strife against one an- 
other. The meaning of Jesus' life and work, of 
his. teaching and his cross, must penetrate the in- 
dustrial realm and shape the formulas of the market 
as completely as it must shape the formulas of 
theology. Indeed, its power will be efficacious 
in the former as fast as it is really efficacious in 
the latter. A selfish commerce has always had 
its strongest ally in a selfish theology. 

The good-will that* is native to the season is 
both typical and prophetic. The Christmas spirit 
in its purity must circle the year. Children some- 
times wish it were '' always Christmas " ; they are 
unconscious prophets. As the embodied truth 
and righteousness and love of God, Jesus has 
given society an ideal of life which can be realized 
only through the regeneration of men and the 
realization of the law of love in all their mutual 
relations. 

When we consider our individual condition, and 
perceive that to Jesus Christ we are indebted for 



88 The Religion of Hope. 

our personal sense of divine mercy and forgiveness 
and help and guidance, — in a word, for the per- 
sonal salvation which is begun and carried on 
toward completion through our contact with God 
in him ; when we think of the hopes and aspirations 
and motives that have been awakened in our hearts 
by him ; when the meaning and glory of the true 
life shines upon us as the revelation and gift of 
the Son of God, — we have some just conception of 
what we owe -to him, and we begin to understand 
why we are moved to celebrate the Christmas 
festival. 

When we reflect on what Jesus has done and is 
doing for society — for the home, for parents and 
children, for the great social body in all its func- 
tions and internal relations, for the oppressed, the 
poor, the miserable, and the dying ; and when we 
think of the promise of social good that there is in 
his teachings, — a promise which will attain fulfilment 
as fast as these teachings become daily, practical 
principles in the business and pleasures and poli- 
tics of men, — then we begin to see why Christendom 
should observe the Christmas festival. 

The world is unspeakably better because that 
Baby smiled in the manger at Bethlehem. Life 
is more humane, and richer in hope, because 

" The Word had breath, and wrought 

With human hands the creed of creeds 
In lovehness of perfect deeds 
More strong than all poetic thought." 



TJie Coming of Christ. 89 

The burden and sorrow of life are lighter be- 
cause the " Man of Sorrows bore our sins in his 
own body on the tree." VVe have hope and heart 
to face Hfe's blackest hours, and fight manfully its 
fiercest battles with doubt and wrong, because 
Jesus lived and labored and suffered, and stood 
fast in love's sweet intent, thus demonstrating the 
presence of God in his world, and the reality of 
his love and care for us his weaker children. 

We have hope and heart to confront death's 
solemn mystery because Jesus died and rose again 
from the dead. We have faith and comfort in 
God because he who came forth from the bosom 
of God has shown us God's heart. What have 
we not of good that is not bound up with the per- 
sonality and life and thought of Jesus our Lord? 
Oh, to be followers of him ! To be humble 
learners of his truth ! To drink in his spirit ! To 
know him and the power of his resurrection, and 
to yield all our life to his blessed rule ! This is 
the true Christmas joy. And to give ourselves to 
his service, and so to give ourselves to humanity 
and to God, this is the true and priceless Christmas 
gift. 



V. 
SAVING OTHERS AND SAVING SELF. 



Through aisles of long-drawn centuries 

My spirit walks in thought, 
And to that symbol lifts its eyes 

Which God's own pity wrought ; 
From Calvary shines the altar's gleam, 

The Church's East is there; 
The Ages one great Minster seem. 

That throbs with praise and prayer. 

And all the way from Calvary down 

The carven pavement shows 
Their graves who won the martyr's crown, 

And safe in God repose ; 
The saints of many a warring creed 

Who now in heaven have learned 
That all paths to the Father lead 

Where Self the feet have spurned. 

James Russell Lowell. 



V. 



SAVING OTHERS AND SAVING SELF. . 

And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads, 
and saying, " Ah, thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest 
it in three days, save thyself, and come down from the cross. 
Likewise also the chief priests, mocking, said among themselves, 
with the scribes, he saved others ; himself he cannot save. — 
Mark xv. 29-31. 

nnHIS is my text: "He saved others; himself 
-*- he cannot save." These words from the 
lips of the priests were a bitter jibe flung in the 
face of the dying Christ. They expressed at once 
the hate, the sense of triumph, and the scorn, of 
men of whose security and peace, as they felt, the 
death of Jesus was the price. These words ex- 
pressed also the judgment of the priests on Jesus' 
mad and now seemingly ruined enterprise. We 
who look back on that tragic event, as it lies in the 
strong interpretative light of Christian history, see 
how cruel and causeless was their hate, how empty 
and short-lived was their triumph, and how idle 
was their scorn. They have remembrance among 
men now, only because of the bad eminence given 
to them by their crime. They have an earthly 
immortality, only as their diaboHcal passions fur- 



94 The Religion of Hope. i 

nish the dark background to the glory which radi- 
ated from their victim and transfigured into im- 
perishable beauty even the shameful cross. The 
long result of Calvary has at last wrung from the 
reluctant lips of the world a confession of Christ's 
great royalty. 

But while we see, with some clearness of vision, 
the true character of those who crucified Jesus, we 
have not yet come, except imperfectly, and at rare 
moments, to a true perception of the deep error 
which lay at the heart of the priests' judgment on 
Christ's mission. That judgment they put into 
words when they said : " He saved others ; himself 
he cannot save." The latter clause of this sentence 
is capable of a rendering which, while not changing 
its essential meaning, gives it fresh force as an ex- 
pression of what the priests and scribes felt. " He 
saved others; cannot he save himself?" In this 
rendering the sneer is more apparent, while the 
nature of the judgment which prompts and points 
the sneer is quite as clearly manifest. How they 
pour contempt on this Gahlean teacher who has at- 
tempted the overthrow of established institutions 
and ways of thinking, and habits and principles of 
conduct ! What a pitiable spectacle he presents 
now, hanging there marred and helpless and dying 
on the execrated cross, framed in between red- 
handed outlaws ! They might even pity him, now 
that he is safe in their clutches, did not his failure 
too deeply stir their contempt. 



Saving Others ajtd Saving Self. 95 

The real nature of their judgment upon the mis- 
sion of Jesus will appear as we seek to analyze it. 
Unconsciously the priests, meaning only to sneer 
and condemn, uttered a great and vital truth. Un- 
wittingly wicked men are sometimes prophets of 
God's purpose. In a consultation of Pharisees 
and priests as to how they might put Jesus to 
death, Caiaphas had said : ** It is expedient for us 
that one man should die for the people," not know- 
ing how true his words were in a far higher sense 
than he meant. A little later the Pharisees de- 
clared in wrath, as they saw the multitude — the 
fickle multitude — flocking after Jesus : ** Behold, 
the world is gone after him," not thinking that in 
future ages their words would have a marvellous 
fulfilment. 

So now, when the purpose of those who hate 
Jesus seems accomphshed, and the perpetrators of' 
the great crime stand mocking around the cross, 
the edge of their sarcasm is turned against them- 
selves, though they know it not, and their judg- 
ment on Christ's mission becomes a judgment on 
their own sin. 

" He saved others ; himself he cannot save," — 
the priests were right; not as they thought, but in 
a far higher sense, Jesus could not save himself. 
If they meant, ** He saved others from death " 
(alluding possibly to the raising of Lazarus a few 
days before), " himself he cannot save from death," 
they spoke truly, though their idea of his inability 



g6 The Religion of Hope. 

to save himself was hopelessly astray. If they 
meant, ** He professed to save others from sorrow 
and sin; he cannot even save himself from pain 
and death," then also they spoke truly. Of course 
they did not think that Christ's inability to save 
himself was any other than natural, mainly physical, 
inability. They did not know that Christ's very 
inability to save himself from the cross was proof 
and manifestation of a higher power and a more 
colossal greatness than any of which they dreamed. 
The real point of their sneer lay in this, that they 
looked upon Christ as having failed, and saw in 
his failure their own triumph. More than that, 
they saw in his failure the proof of his weakness 
and folly. It was partly his crime that he had not 
succeeded. Often in the judgment of men simple 
failure carries with it the evidence that failure is 
deserved. Success, even in an enterprise of doubt- 
ful character, almost always, for the time being, 
justifies itself to the world. Success is a god 
which has a high place in the world's pantheon. 
The saying, " Nothing succeeds like success," is an 
expression of the involuntary tribute which men 
pay to the seeming effectiveness of to-day, before 
to-morrow comes with its inevitable rectification of 
false judgment. The successful man, as the con- 
temporaneous world measures success, is the man 
who has followers and flatterers without number. 
It was the seeming success of the priests that 
turned the head of the fickle, impressionable mul- 



Saving OtJiers and Saving Self. 97 

titude, and evoked the cry of execration against 
Jesus from the Hps of some who, but the day 
before, had chanted his praise. 

There was a representative worldly wisdom in 
the judgment of the priests. From their point of 
view, Jesus of Nazareth had set himself up as the 
Messiah and the Son of God, and had failed to 
fulfil any part of their Messianic ideal. His oppo- 
sition to them was an unpardonable sin. Now he 
is condemned by the Sanhedrim, and executed by 
Roman soldiers under the order of the Procurator, 
and the would-be Messiah is thrust into company 
with thieves, that their infamy may over-lap him 
and deepen his degradation. They hate him be- 
cause they recognize in him an enemy to their 
principles and power. They despise him as one 
who has been on a fool's errand and has justly 
come to grief 

And from the mere worldly point of view the 
priests were right. From that point of view Jesus 
had failed, had suffered defeat, and was expiating 
his stupendous blunder on the cross. 

But while we are looking into the nature and 
ground of the priests' judgment on Christ, we see 
that very judgment transmuted into a thunderbolt 
which smites them, and, ere it smites, by its flash 
reveals their irremediable folly and their inexpi- 
able guilt. "He saved others; himself he cannot 
save," — this a sign of failure, an evidence of de- 
feat, a ground of condemnation? It is the very 

7 



98 The Religion of Hope. 

apex of his triumph; it blazons his success; it 
crowns him with unfading glory. He proves him- 
self the Christ, in that, saving others, he does not 
save himself. The courtier-priest, the surpliced 
worldling, counts the saving of self the supreme 
business of life, and so he sneers at the martyr 
who lays down his life for a sentiment. And 
God's word declares, and history affirms, and at 
last every human soul confesses, that he that saves 
himself is lost. 

Jesus was not in the world to save himself. 
" For the Son of Man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom 
for many." He came to save men. For the at- 
tainment of this end he cheerfully accepted all the 
pain and cost of his mission, and yielded himself 
even to the death of the cross. He hungered for 
the salvation of souls from the impotence and 
wretchedness and guiltiness of sin; therefore he 
could not save himself Saving himself was no 
part of his purpose. 

It is evident to one who has a just conception 
of Christ's spirit and purpose that he could not 
save himself because he was perfectly under the 
sway and consecration of love. To avoid the very 
conditions by which alone love's purpose could be 
fulfilled, would be not to save, but to deny and 
defeat his true self; for he and love were one. 
He loved too well not to suffer; too faithfully not 
to die. He was under necessity, but that neces- 



Saving Others and Saving Self. 99 

sity was not material; the force that urged him 
to toil and endure and serve, that set his face 
steadfastly toward the crisis of Passion Week, and 
impelled him at last to hasten to the cross, was 
not external to him : it was the irresistible divine 
impulse of his own capacious and eager heart. 
All of his earthly life was an exhibition of love, that 
rose to a supreme exposure on Calvary. So great 
was his love, so lofty, so pure, so divine, that it 
seized upon the cross, an abhorred instrument of 
death, anointed with infamy and steeped in shame, 
and transformed it into a perpetual emblem of 
itself Once the cross meant all of guilt and de- 
gradation that men could condense into a symbol; 
now it means love that passeth understanding. 
The grimness has all gone out of it, and in place 
thereof is a tender beauty. No more does it 
express cruel pain and languishing, but, instead, 
a '* soft strength " that clasps the world to the 
heart of infinite goodness. 

What a wonderful transformation is this ! Has 
history its parallel? The executioner's sword 
smote off the head of a saintly Paul, but is there 
any beauty to men now in that weapon's cold glit- 
ter? The stake upheld John Huss amid the roar- 
ing flames of martyrdom, but is the stake hence- 
forth winsome? The guillotine sheared off the 
head of many a heroine of whom the world was 
not worthy, but has 'that engine of death taken 
on any dear and tender symbolism? But the 



100 The Religion of Hope, 

cross of Christ, rude wood and iron though it 
was, was sublimed by the love and greatness of 
him who hung thereon, and has become for all 
time, for all eternity, a spiritual fact and a spiritual 
power. Well may the Christian poet sing: 

"In the cross of Christ I glory; 

Towering o'er the wrecks of time, 
All the light of sacred story- 
Gathers round its head subhme." 

We talk about the love of Christ in words that 
vainly strive to bear the burden of its vast mean- 
ing. We endeavor to Illustrate it from the shining 
deeds of human heroism; but our best illustra- 
tions are faint shadows of the '' love of God which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The mother sacrifi- 
cing herself for her child, — as that mother in New 
Hampshire, who, in the dead of winter and far 
from help, wrapped her last garment about her 
baby, and, when late rescue came, lay a stiffened 
corpse, while the baby smiled an unconscious wel- 
come in the rescuer's face ; the patriot, — some 
Arnold von Winkelried, gathering into his own 
breast a sheaf of Austrian spears and bathing their 
pitiless points in his warm blood, while his country- 
men of the Alps find a way to liberty through the 
broken wall of the hostile phalanx ; the friend, — 
some Pythias, mounting the gallows with tranquil 
smile in place of his condemned and delaying 
Damon, — these, and countless other examples of 



Saving Others and Saving Self. loi 

love triumphing over fear and death, the gems that 
shine undimmed amid the murk of wonted human 
selfishness, help our thoughts as we strive to grasp 
the greatness of Jesus' love : but all these pale 
like stars about the glorious sun, when we look 
at the cross. In this supreme act of Christ's, — his 
voluntary submission to death for the salvation of 
men, — this act so natural to Christ and so vividly 
showing the culmination of his whole life's move- 
ment, we have embodied a root principle of holy 
life. It is the inability of love to save itself, to 
think of itself, to do anything but give itself for 
the blessing of its object. This is the nature of 
love. No pain deters it, for it quenches pain in 
the fountain of its own life. No cost bankrupts 
it, for it lives by self-expenditure. No danger 
appals it, for it fears naught but want of oppor- 
tunity to exercise its sweet ministry. No extrem- 
ity can exhaust it, for its supply is the unsounded, 
unmeasured sea of God's heart. Its name is God, 
for God is love. 

The priests, looking upon Jesus, said: "He 
saved others ; himself he cannot save," and knew 
not that love never saves itself, — that it is love's 
dearest privilege and highest joy to lavish itself in 
an unwasting stream of self-sacrifice. They thought 
he had failed, and knew not that the seeming fail- 
ure was love's triumph. They looked upon him 
as their victim, and knew not that he, in dying 
by man's hand, was yet dying for man, and so 



102 The Religio7i of Hope, 

was man's victor and sin's victor. They saw only 
the superficial fact from the world's low point of 
view, and had no glimmer of the truth that the death 
of Jesus in its spiritual meaning was the supreme rev- 
elation of God's redeeming love to man, and in its 
spiritual energy was God's power that is surely to 
possess and transform the world and determine the 
destiny of men and empires. They saw only with 
the eye of pride and selfishness and lust of earthly 
power ; and seeing thus, they said : '^ His work was 
vain ; his enterprise has failed ; we have conquered 
an enemy to our influence and peace; let him be 
forgotten." As they saw, so sees the carnal mind 
always. The priests had no conception of the 
divine, redemptive significance of Christ's death. 
Of that they were not capable. Equally blind 
were they to its meaning as an exhibition of that 
spirit of love and self-sacrifice which can suffer 
and die for what the world calls a sentiment. 

Calvary is a place of sharp contrasts. Evil 
looks never so evil as when seen side by side 
with goodness. Selfishness never shows so hide- 
ous a face as when surprised Jn some moment of 
keen antagonism to love. Human sin looks not 
so black in the lightning blaze of Sinai as it does 
in the soft splendor of the cross. 

Calvary is also a place of wonderful revelations. 
God is there, in his suffering Son, exposing his 
heart to an insensible world. And man is there, 
showing the deep depravation of his moral nature 



Saving Others and Saving Self. 103 

by selfishness. What a revelation of sin does the 
cross give us ! What blindness enwraps the soul 
that could see no beauty in the Christ ! What 
malice directs the hand that could buffet his gentle 
face ! What madness of rage enflames the heart 
that could pour out scorn and contumely upon his 
pain ! There, on Calvary, is hung up a mirror that 
no resentful art can ever hide, in which, through 
all time, the sinful soul may see its own face. In 
those mocking priests and scribes was incarnate 
the spirit of selfishness that pervades the world, 
as in Christ was incarnate the spirit of divine love 
that seeks the world's redemption. 

From that scene come beams of strong interpre- 
tative light upon the life of to-day. The judg- 
ment of the selfish world coincides with the 
judgment of the priests ; though of many and 
various forms, in essential quality it is one with 
theirs. And just here, in this truth, is a lesson 
of immense practical import. The world cares 
supremely for itself. Sin is selfishness, and self- 
ishness and Christlikeness, selfishness and love, 
are the opposite poles of moral quality. At one 
extreme is God, and at the other extreme is 
that personification of evil which the Bible calls 
Satan. As we are really under the dominion of 
love on the one hand, or of selfishness on the 
other, we are gravitating toward this extreme or 
that, approaching the divine or the Satanic. But 
the world does not believe that it is selfish, and 



104 ^^^^ Religion of Hope. 

in dire need of being broken on the cross of 
self-denial. The worldly spirit believes in itself as 
prudent and forehanded. Its main end is itself. 
It seeks its own comfort, its own advancement, and 
its own gain. The world calls the earnestness of 
the philanthropist folly, and looks with ill-con- 
cealed contempt on the missionary who buries his 
life in pa^an lands that he may win the heathen 
to God. Certain forms of benevolence it smiles 
upon complacently, because some forms of benev- 
olence are profitable; they bring an appreciable 
gain of praise or influence. But the martyr it can- 
not understand ; the soul that flings itself with 
utter abandon into the weltering sea of human 
wretchedness, careless of praise or blame, seeking 
only at any cost the salvation of the lost, is to the 
world an insoluble enigma. It calls love a senti- 
ment, and sneers at sentiment. It would call holy 
Stephen a poor fool, and bid him hold his peace, 
leave off preaching, and go into some trade that 
would bring him gold instead of smiting stones. 
When not opposed, it is contemptuous; when 
challenged, it hates. 

The selfish heart sees Howard giving fortune and 
life to the service of the sick and the imprisoned, 
and at last dying of disease into the contagious 
atmosphere of which divine pity had urged him, 
and unconsciously it repeats the saying of the 
priests, "He saved others; himself he could not 
save." It looks upon some delicate woman spend- 



Saving Others and Saving Self. 105 

ing her week-days in toil for bread, and her Sun- 
days in unsparing devotion to comforting the 
children of sorrow and teaching them the gospel 
of Christ, and scornfully pities her self-sacrifice. 
Expenditure without gain that is palpable to sense 
it counts a form of prodigality that is to be avoided, 
if not condemned. 

In many a Christian heart selfishness still con- 
tests with love the place of eminent influence. 
How often we are unconsciously moved by selfish- 
ness in the daily adjustment of our lives to those 
about us. The word of Christ urges us to loving 
service for others, and the example of Christ in- 
vites us to imitation ; yet how slowly do we come 
under the control of his spirit. It costs to help 
others, to save others, to relax for them the strin- 
gent tyranny of want, and to lighten the oppres- 
sion of care and sorrow. It costs to give them the 
real gospel of Christ. It costs to do good in any 
deep, large way. It demands hours of work, often 
wearisome work, when personal ends claim all our 
energy. It makes frequent invasion on mere phy- 
sical comfort. It calls for the perpetual exercise of 
sympathy, and sympathy is often painful. Many 
a man avoids the sight of suffering from a mere 
selfish reluctance to have his placidity of feeling 
disturbed. Many will not think of the griefs and 
famishment of those about them because the 
thought is troublesome. 

Moreover, a real Christlike service contravenes 



io6 The Religion of Hope. 

those false ideas, which we so often cherish as true, 
of personal development and advancement. How 
often culture is selfish, and the desire for it a 
selfish passion. Large claims are made upon us 
continually for benevolent work, such as teach- 
ing the ignorant, guiding the weak, and persuad- 
ing the wanderer back to the paths of virtue. In 
the church, in the Sunday school, and in society 
are needy and inviting fields for Christian labor. 
"But," say some, "I cannot engage in this work; 
it is too exacting. I need my time for myself. I 
must rest, I must read, I must care for myself, or 
I shall fail of that mental growth which I ought to 
attain. I cannot afford to give the one day in the 
week when there is respite from business cares 
to the service of others, and so neglect myself." 
Many a Christian has beguiled himself into think- 
ing, with a kind of stiff conscientiousness, that he 
ought to give all the hours of the Lord's day 
wholly to himself. Does it not occur to you, my 
friends, that some time for self-culture may be, 
and ought to be, rescued from the tyrannous de- 
mands of business; that a man has no right to 
make himself a slave of business ; that the gain of 
such slavery is not worth its cost even now, and 
will be still less so by and by? Is it not plain, 
too, that culture secured at the expense of Christ- 
likeness is not the culture that you most need, 
and that it is too dear at such a price? The 
end of life is not merely knowledge, power and 



Saving Others and Saving Self. 107 

possession, but character, manhood; and indeed 
character is these — knowledge, possession, and 
power — in highest form. The faithful mission- 
ary, the self-sacrificing Sunday-school teacher, the 
man or woman who is never too busy to give 
thought and time and money and toil for the com- 
fort and encouragement and salvation of others, 
is winning a richer culture and ripening a nobler 
character than is possible to the selfish soul, how- 
ever great may be his learning or his art. Let 
us get knowledge with all eagerness; but if we 
seek it at the expense of that which is higher, we 
are rebuked even by the pagan Confucius, who 
said: "Knowledge is to know all men; benevo- 
lence is to love all men." 

Which is the true exemplar of the best life, — the 
priest who so feared the loss of prestige and power 
that he must bring even Jesus to the cross, or 
Jesus who dies for love of the world and is mocked 
with the cry : ** He saved others ; himself he can- 
not save"? If, as you look on this scene, Jesus 
alone is beautiful and glorious to you, then remem- 
ber that if you would be like him, if you would 
save others, you cannot save yourself; you neither 
can save yourself, nor will you care to save your- 
self, from toil and cost and pain. You will forget 
yourself. You will lose yourself in the abandon of 
generous, serviceful, Christlike life. And then, as 
Jesus found a heavenly joy and an enduring tri- 
umph even in the cross, so you, losing yourself in 



io8 TJie Religion of Hope. 

his spirit and for him, will find the same joy and 
share in the same triumph. So, at last, saving 
others, you will find yourself saved, having, w^ith 
your Lord, ** endured the cross, despising the 
shame," and entered into the joy of a heavenly 
power and a heavenly peace. 

" Speak, History, who are life's victors ? Unroll thy long 
annals, and say — 

Are they those whom the world called the victors, who won 
the success of a day? 

The Martyrs, or Nero ? The Spartans who fell at Ther- 
mopylae's tryst, 

Or the Persians and Xerxes ? His judges, or Socrates ? 
Pilate or Christ?" 

And now, as I close, I am burdened with the 
thought that, to many, the highest attainments of 
human goodness set forth in the Scriptures and 
personalized in Christ are beautiful but impracti- 
cable dreams. But it is only in their moments of 
lowest spiritual sensibility that this can be so to 
any who have really felt the beauty and power of 
the Son of God. The love of Christ, as the per- 
vasive atmosphere of a life in the world, has in it 
so great a suggestion of unreality and unattainable- 
ness, because there is still so much of selfishness 
in our hearts. The wisdom of the world counts it 
needful that every life should have in it at least a 
little salt of selfishness, and the spirit of the world 
prevails with us. But not so have we learned of 
Christ. Godliness is not impracticable, even in the 



Saving Others and Saving Self. 109 

midst of" a crooked and perverse generation ; " nor 
is it only a beautiful ideal toward which we shall 
rise in our songs and our prayers, but which per- 
force must be forgotten in the rough, wrestling life 
of every day. Christlikeness is not mysticism ; it 
is "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, 
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance ; " it is lov- 
ing God with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength, 
and our neighbor as ourselves; it is having fellow- 
ship with Christ day by day, and doing each day's 
work with hearts instructed by him, and eyes that 
trace out his footsteps, and feet that press the 
prints of his feet as " he went about doing good." 

And on the threshold of this beautiful life are 
written in letters of gold the words : " If any man 
will come after me, let him deny himself, and take 
up his cross, and follow me." 

" God the Father give us grace 
To walk in the light of Jesus' Face ; 
God the Son give us part 
In the hiding-place of Jesus' heart ; 
God the Spirit so hold us up 
That we may drink of Jesus' cup ! " 

Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, 
the only wise God, be honor and glory, through 
Jesus Christ, for ever and ever. Amen. 



VI. 
THE MIND OF CHRIST. 



I WENT to seek for Christ, 

And in a hovel rude, 
With naught to fence the weather from his head, 
The King I sought for meekly stood ; 
A naked, hungry child 
Clung round his gracious knee. 
And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled 

To bless the smile that set him free ; 
New miracles I saw his presence do, — 

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, 
The gathered chips into a wood-pile grew. 

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store ; 
I knelt and wept : my Christ no more I seek. 
His throne is with the outcast and the weak. 

James Russell Lowell. 



VI. 

THE MIND OF CHRIST. 

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. — 
Phil. ii. 5. 

TN the notable passage from St. Paul's letter to 
"^ the Philippians, extending from the fifth to 
the eleventh verses of the second chapter, the 
dominant thought of the apostle is the humility 
and self-subjection of Jesus contrasted with his 
consequent divine exaltation. He, the Son of 
God, "emptied himself, taking the form of a 
bond-servant. . . . Wherefore God also highly- 
exalted him, and gave unto him the name which 
is above every name." The exaltation is because 
of the humiliation, yet it is also through the humil- 
iation. Even in his subjection Jesus achieves his 
exaltation, and the words, "Wherefore God also 
highly exalted him," express the objective fulfil- 
ment of the subjective process through which the 
Great Servant rises into manifest sovereignty. The 
sovereignty before which every knee shall bow, and 
to which every tongue shall render willing homage, 
is the sovereignty of love, self-sacrifice, and ser- 
vice. These are the great elements of " the mind 



114 T^^^^ Religion of Hope. 

which was in Christ Jesus." This is the " mind " 
of which the apostle says to the Philippians: " Let 
this mind be in you." The experience and spirit 
of Jesus are cited as eminent, but not singular. 
That is, here, in Jesus, are disclosed the true 
spirit, aim, and process of human life. Humility, 
love, service, — these are the steps to greatness 
of work and character. The experience of Jesus 
is not abnormal, but normal; it furnishes the 
norm or standard toward which we are to strive. 
The cross, with its accompanying shame and suf- 
fering and death, is the sign rather than the 
measure of Jesus' self-subjection to love's behests ; 
the service is limited only by the capacity to serve, 
and love meets no cost that it will not gladly pay. 
This is a strenuous doctrine of life, but it is the 
true doctrine. Let us look at it a little more, 
closely. ** Let this mind be in you which was also 
in Christ Jesus." The word *' mind " (^poveiTi) 
implies more than the action of intelligence: it 
includes also feeling and purpose. It means this 
way of looking at life, this sort of feeling toward 
men, and this kind of purpose in action. As 
Jesus thought, felt, and purposed, so do ye. In 
a word, have the mind, the heart, the aim of Jesus 
Christ. These words strike the key-note of the 
highest human life ; they suggest the ideal toward 
which the followers of Christ should aspire and 
strive. 

This mind is (i) a mind of love. Jesus was not 



TJie Mind of Christ. 1 1 5 

carrying out a pre-arranged and formal scheme. 
There is little likeness in him to the artificial func- 
tionary of theology. He was born into the world 
and into the race, flesh of man's flesh, and bone 
of man's bone, and nature of man's nature. In 
•him God revealed himself in forms of genuine 
human feeling and action and character. In him 
was revealed also the divine kinship and possi- 
bilities of man. Jesus was the Son of Man; there- 
fore he understood man, and felt for man in real 
and natural human ways. He was the Son of 
God; therefore he thought about man and felt 
toward man in true, divine ways. Unfettered by 
the littleness of neighborhood, the narrowness of 
sect, and the selfishness of tribe or race, he loved 
men with the fulness and greatness of his own 
great nature. He loved men, not riierely an ab- 
stract conception called mankind. This love dis- 
closed itself in quick and unerring sympathy with 
men in their needs, their weaknesses, their aspira- 
tions, their sorrows, and their joys. Accidents of 
condition and culture put no bar on his sympathy. 
He lived and labored most among the poor, but 
he loved also the rich. He was seen most often 
with the lowly, but he did not shun the proud and 
mighty. He was disconcerted no more by the 
haughtiness and resentfulness of the cultured than 
he was by the ingratitude and fickleness of the 
ignorant and frivolous. He loved humanity, and 
each concrete individual furnished object and op- 



1 1 6 The Religion of Hope. 

portunity for the exercise of his sympathy. His 
love disclosed itself in his appreciation of persons. 
The individual was significant to him, not simply 
as one of a number, an atom of the mass, but as 
a unique personality, with individual needs, apti- 
tudes and capacity. The woman that was a sinner, 
Simon the scornful Pharisee, Peter the impulsive 
disciple, Judas the traitor, the officious and bust- 
ling Martha, the contemplative, affectionate Mary, 
the slow-witted, incredulous Thomas, the politic 
Nicodemus, the querulous cripple by the pool, 
the ambitious mother of James and John, — each 
was understood, appreciated, and dealt with by 
Jesus with unerring judgment of each individual's 
nature and needs. 

His love disclosed itself also in his patience. 
The temptation to be impatient is one of the strong- 
est temptations which tlie far-seeing and benevolent 
soul has to meet. Men do not readily respond, 
either individually or in the mass, to spiritual in- 
fluence. He who would save men must have an 
invincible faith in their salvability, and an invin- 
cible patience in waiting for the slow processes 
of spiritual development. How disappointing the 
world must have been to the prophet of Nazareth, 
who came into Judea pressed in spirit to preach 
*' the kingdom of God " and to lead men into it ! 
How sluggish and even antipathetic was most of 
the life about him ! Even the most docile dis- 
ciples, by their inaptitude and obtuseness to spirit- 



The Mind of Christ. 117 

ual ideas and motives, wrung from the heart of 
Jesus more than once the cry, ** O foolish ones, 
and slow of heart to understand ! " 

But Jesus was impatient only with knowing and 
selfish hypocrisy. At the one point of his contact 
with the spirit of diabolical selfishness masquerad- 
ing under the garb of religion, his feeling kindled 
into a flame of indignation. There was no passion, 
in the coarse sense of ordinary human anger, but 
there was the wrath of outraged love against that 
which denied love and sought to destroy it in the 
name of Him who is love. . Jesus was patient with 
the impulsive and with the dull; patient with 
weakness and with misguided strength ; patient 
with folly and with fault. Stronger than every 
revulsion of feeling from the grossness and bad- 
ness, of which there was so much in the life about 
him, was his love for the men who, beneath the 
grossness and the badness, had the capacity for 
being sons of God. 

The mind of Jesus was (2) a mind of self-sacri- 
fice. That is, the love of Jesus was not merely a 
sentiment or state of feeling ; it poured itself forth in 
action that was marked by prompt and continuous 
self-sacrifice. His life literally fulfilled his words : 
" The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
many." 

Nothing but the cross is an adequate, or even 
tolerable, symbol of that hfe. He died for the 



1 1 8 The Religion of Hope. 

world, but his death was only the culmination of 
a prolonged self-subjection to the one end of 
saving men through the revelation of God and 
the manifestation of all-suffering love. 

The measure of Christ's self-sacrifice was the 
capacity of man to receive good as the result of 
that self-sacrifice, — not, indeed, man's immediate, 
but his ultimate capacity. True self-sacrifice is 
not aimless, nor wasteful. In itself it has no merit. 
The madman hurls himself from the precipice, or 
rushes into the fire,, and his action is as aimless and 
as worthless as a hurricane or a conflagration. The 
patriot flings himself upon the advancing bayonets 
of the enemy, and the martyr walks, singing, to the 
stake ; but the one purchases by his blood the 
freedom of his country, and the other, by his costly 
testimony, vindicates and perpetuates the faith, 
that, by and by, blesses all men. Self-sacrifice 
with a moral motive is always fruitful, and justifies 
itself in the large economy of life. The self-sacri- 
fice of Jesus was the price which love freely paid 
for the attainment of its beneficent ends. The 
measure of that self-sacrifice is not to be found in 
its immediate result, nor even in all the results 
which history thus far gives us, but in the possi- 
bility of man to attain the fulness of being and 
power and experience as a child of God. " For 
the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the 
cross, despising the shame." We must take into 
account the whole spiritual destiny of man in order 



The Mind of Christ. 119 

to get the measure of Jesus' self-sacrifice ; that is, 
his self-sacrifice expressed the entire reach, both 
of his love for man and his thought of man, and 
of the fulfilled divine purpose in man. 

The mind of Jesus was (3) a mind of service. 
Jesus did not seek merely the one end of expiating 
sin, and thus warding off penalty from the sinner. 
The truth underlying this crude conception is often 
lost in the gross and immoral caricature of both 
God and man, of which theology has been some- 
times ignorantly guilty. Whatever he may have 
had to do with sin, as a formal transaction affecting 
man's forensic standing before the Supreme Judge, 
Jesus had mainly and constantly to do with sin as 
a condition of human defect, perversion, and inca- 
pacity. Salvation is the conquest of sin through 
the awakening of spiritual life in man's heart, the 
extrusion of evil by the power of indwelling divine 
affections and motives, and the discipline of the 
soul in knowledge, righteousness, and love. The 
process is vital, and is accomphshed by the vital 
force of the divine life in man, imparted by the 
continuous touch of a divine personality. Hence 
the relation of Jesus to men is a relation of genetic 
and formative influence. Jesus is supremely the 
servant. He serves in his life, his deeds, his teach- 
ing, his example, his death, his resurrection, and 
the continuous play of his unmeasured spiritual 
influence on humanity. His public ministry on 
earth is typical and revelatory. ** He went about 



120 The Religion of Hope. 

doing good," — thus simply is expressed the essen- 
tial quality of his unique and majestic life. His 
great idea, uttered and illustrated in manifold 
forms, identifies the service of God with the service 
of man. In his life, idea and fact continuously and 
completely correspond. The world has had many 
benefactors, — many men and women who have 
thought and toiled and suffered for the good of 
their fellow-creatures; but in range and fulness 
and elevation of service, Jesus stands as entirely 
alone as he stands alone in perfectness of character. 
Here is the pattern of human life. We can look 
to no one else without disapointment. In him alone 
do we find the ever enticing, ever approached, yet 
ever unattained, ideal. The service which Jesus 
renders to man meets not one crisis of man's need, 
but every crisis. It includes in its circle the whole 
man, — not only the whole individual, but the 
whole organic life of the race. It does not exhaust 
itself at one period of time, but sweeps the entire 
course of man's existence. Historically and geo- 
graphically, Jesus touched the world at a single 
point; but spiritually he puts himself in contact 
with the whole. There is no power of the human 
personality, whether it be of intelligence, or of 
feeling, or of will, to which he does not minister. 
There is no real interest of man which his benefi- 
cent purpose does not include. There is no essen- 
tial need of the human spirit which he does not 
meet. 



The Mind of Christ. 12 1 

The fulness of Jesus' service to the world appears 
in this, — that while it was objective and palpable in 
his works of healing and help to the needy immedi- 
ately about him in Palestine, its essential power 
and aim are subjective and spiritual. What he 
does for man is mainly wrought in man. He never 
pauses on the material, the surface of life, but 
reaches to the inmost centre and secret of human 
susceptibility. He aims not merely at relief, but 
at renovation ; not merely at comfort, but at bless- 
edness ; not merely at a bettered condition, but 
at a redeemed and transfigured life. The supreme 
motive and aim co-ordinate all the varieties of 
action. The purpose to do good reaches far; it 
reaches to the absolute good of man in the fulfil- 
ment of his destiny as a son of God and a partici- 
pator in the divine nature and glory. 

This, then, is *' the mind which was in Christ 
Jesus." It is the mind of love to all men, — a love 
that reaches below and beyond all accidents of con- 
dition and place and time; a love which, having 
its spring in the indwelling nature of God, rises into 
a pure and unquenchable " enthusiasm of human- 
ity," and lifts every life which feels the pulse of its 
power up to the level of the divine. It is the mind 
of self-sacrifice, — a pure and self-less passion, that 
burns up selfishness in its holy flame, and makes 
of life one limitless capability of self-expenditure 
in the attainments of love's ends. It is a mind of 
service, — a disposition and purpose to do good 



122 The Religion of Hope. 

that exalts every action into a manifestation and 
fulfilment of the good will of God. 

In a word, it is the mind by which he whom it 
animates and informs, hov/ever humble may be his 
sphere and however small may be his means, is 
exalted into a helper and saviour of his fellowmen, 
and a bringer in of the kingdom of God. 

This is the mind which we are urged to seek, 
taught how to attain, and divinely enabled to exert 
and illustrate in hfe. 

As we turn our thought back for a moment to 
the plane of the struggling, selfish, and low-pitched 
life that we know, to which most of us are so 
closely confined that only in shining moments of 
thought and feeling are we clearly conscious of any 
other, we are prone to yield to the spirit of dis- 
couragement and doubt that rises within us. This 
is the ideal ; we must believe that. We feel the 
strong enticement of the idea, or the dream, as we 
half involuntarily call it; but the pull of selfishness 
in our hearts and the gravitation of the materiality 
all about us are strong, and too often prevailing. 
Is this, then, only the rapturous thought of the seer 
and saint? Is there not rather the divinest prac- 
ticality in the conception of life which Jesus brings 
before us? One of the great elements of power in 
the personal ministry of Jesus was his manifest and 
contagious belief in the worth and salvability of 
men. In a deep sense, because he believed so 
utterly in God, Jesus believed in man. The very 



The Mind of Christ. 123 

extent of his requirements, and the very loftiness 
of his teachings, witness to his vast faith in man's 
possibihty. That he should say, " Be ye perfect, 
even as your Father wlio is in heaven is perfect,' 
when once we really grasp the meaning of the 
words, thrills our hearts with hope and the aspira- 
tion to reach upwards and strive to prove our 
sonship to God. 

It is not then a mere dream of an unattainable 
power and excellence which exhales before us from 
the personality and communication of Jesus. The 
exhortation is positive and forceful. It comes to 
all who will see and hear. 

Listen to these words, — not mine, but St. Paul's, 
not St. Paul's, but Christ's, — listen, and grasp the 
meaning which, through these words, the Spirit 
discloses to you : Let this mind, this great mind 
of love and self-sacrifice and service, this mind 
which was in Christ Jesus, be in you. It does not 
matter what your occupation may be, nor the 
apparent extent of your sphere, nor the measure 
of your specific capability as a worker. This 
exhortation is not for the few, but for all who will 
live toward the best. The humblest life gives 
ample scope for exhibiting and exercising the 
mind of Christ. What was Judea to the world? 
What is your little sphere to the broad expanse of 
human life ? Geographically, Judea was but a point 
on the surface of the habitable globe. But Hfe is 
not measured by geographical boundaries. The 



124 ^^^^ Religion of Hope, 

narrow circle of which you are the centre is a 
sufficient arena for achieving hfe's greatest work, 
and winning the soul's grandest victories. Each 
personality is the centre of the universe. Each 
human soul is the temple and throne of God. 
Each man or woman may live with a truth and 
force and beauty that will be enduring and fruit- 
ful through all eternity. You may fail of attaining 
riches ; you may not win eminence on the roll of 
temporal fame; but you can possess the mind 
of the Son of God ; you can live in his spirit ; 
you can work with his force; you can testify 
with his truth ; you can love with his heart ; and 
you can rise daily toward heaven with his aspira- 
tion. You may barely win the livelihood which 
is comprised in food and clothes and means to 
move about on the earth ; but meanwhile you can 
abundantly live, a blessing and a help to your 
fellows and a shining witness to the presence of 
God in the hearts and homes of men. 

In conclusion, two thoughts claim our attention. 
These are: i. The influence of *' the mind of 
Christ" on the work which we do. ''The mind of 
Christ" miakes all effort terminate (i) not on the 
reward, that is, on the mere wage which men pay 
for our service. A fair return for honest work is a 
just and necessary element in the economic rela- 
tions of men. Very few people, comparatively, 
get their living at first hand from nature. The 
material return which society renders to each in- 



The Mind of Christ. 125 

dividual in compensation for labor of hand or 
brain is a part of the mutual service by which men 
nourish and sustain each other. Industry of every 
sort is entitled to its appropriate fruits. As all 
workers contribute to the material or moral wealth 
of the community, so all rightfully share in the 
material products by which bodily hfe is sup- 
ported. But the end of work is not material. He 
who toils only for money, or its equivalent, has not 
yet risen to any true conception of the moral life, 
— that is, the real life of man. 

(2) Nor does effort inspired and directed by 
*' the mind of Christ" terminate on the thing done. 
It is not for the sake of the harvest that is gath- 
ered, or the machine that is invented, or the house 
that is built, or the garment that is manufactured, 
or the book that is written, or the picture that is 
painted, or the statue that is carved, that the true 
human worker puts forth his best energies. There 
is an honest and noble pride in doing well what- 
ever one does. In some sense a man puts himself 
into his work. Thomas Carlyle's sturdy father 
built stone bridges that incarnated his own strong 
intelligence and solid worth of character. Sleazy 
and superficial work is immoral. *' Scamp carpen- 
tering," said Adam Bede, " is an abomination to 
God." The conscientious workman must absolve 
himself to himself. Apart from the price which 
his work brings, he recognizes a real value to 
himself and to society in putting excellence into 



126 The Religion of Hope, 

the thing which he does. It is a mean sort of 
dishonesty that one practises who does anything 
sHghtingly. Doing whatsoever we do as unto the 
Lord, is the form into which St. Paul puts his idea 
of manly and Christian industry. This includes 
much more than simply taking care to do well the 
task that is in hand, but it certainly includes that. 

(3) But rightly inspired effort does not termi- 
nate merely on the excellence of the work. It 
rises higher and contemplates an end that co- 
ordinates all work with the noblest moral and 
spiritual enterprises. The mind of Christ makes 
all effort terminate on man, — on his comfort, his 
enlightenment, and his betterment. Thus all work, 
from the humblest to the highest tasks, takes on 
the form, because it has in it the essence, of true 
service. The house is built not simply for a price, 
nor simply for the sake of making a good house, 
but that there may be a home in which sweet 
human life may thrive and blossom and grow into 
beauty and power. The carpenter drives the nail 
not less surely, and fits the joint not less nicely, 
because his forecasting heart is happy with the 
thought of the enhanced human weal which he is 
helping to produce. The lesson is taught not 
simply for the fee, nor for the sake of good peda- 
gogics and sound learning, but that there may be 
a higher measure and power of knowing, that is, 
a higher quality of intellectual life, in the pupil. 
The teacher is the benefactor, both of the indi- 



The Mind of Christ. 127 

vidual taught and of the society to which he 
belongs. )^y his work the level of intelligence is 
raised, and the world is helped onward in its moral 
development. The teaching will not be less ac- 
curate and broad because the teacher glows with 
the thought of what he is doing for humanity. 
The song is sung not that silvery notes may bring 
an increased supply of silver coin, nor even that a 
higher art may be attained and exhibited, but that 
the listener may have a pure pleasure, and with the 
pleasure may receive an inspiration and uplift of 
soul. The singer will not sing less sweetly because 
her heart swells with the glad thought of her min- 
istry to the aesthetic and spiritual needs of men. 

The spirit of Christ in us makes all our work 
noble, and fruitful to a degree far beyond the power 
of any economic standards to measure. It makes 
all work well-doing, or, in the expressive phrase 
of St. Paul, TO Kokov iroiovvTe^, — " beautiful doing." 

2. The influence of " the mind of Christ" on the 
worker. 

A vital part of the result of all work is its effect 
on the worker. AH our activity has a potent and 
permanent reflex influence. The nature of the 
reflex influence is determined by the motive of 
the action. We are bettered or worsened by what- 
ever we voluntarily do. Herein we see the neces- 
sity of action to the discipline of character. The 
teachings of the New Testament make much of 
conduct, because through conduct principle be- 
comes an effective force. What we are depends 



128 The Religion of Hope. 

on what we do, as well as what we do depends on 
what we are. In childhood, if rightly taught, we 
acquire moral habits before we can grasp moral 
principles. So the development of man in intelli- 
gence and character demands action as well as 
contemplation and reflection. Action confirms as 
well as reveals purpose. The divine education 
of the human race luminously exhibits the truth 
that we are set to doing work not merely that work 
may be done, but that we may do it, and so derive 
the culture that can come only through the reflex 
of our activity. In all that we do we attain a 
result in quality and direction and force of life. 
Often the importance of work lies far more in its 
eff"ect on us than in its immediate product. The 
world conceivably might get on without your speci- 
fic contribution of industry; hut yon cannot get on 
without it. 

The great business of life is not to do things, 
but to become something large and fair. As it is 
not the deed itself, but the motive, in which lies 
the moral character of the deed, so it is not the 
specific task that is done, but " the mind " with 
which it is done, that ennobles both deed and doer. 
Here is the central point of highest human fellow- 
ship, that fellowship into which all are invited, — 
the possibility, not of doing great things, but of 
doing all things greatly. The spirit of love ranks 
the feet-washing in that upper room in Jerusalem 
with the raising of Lazarus and the dying on the 
cross. The lowliest woman on a back street in 



The Mind of Christ. 129 

this city may be the true kinswoman of Florence 
Nightingale in the Crimea. Moral affinities run 
across all barriers of race and culture and posses- 
sion. Whosoever does the will of God is brother 
and sister and mother of the Lord. The modest 
teacher in the far West, or on an Asiatic mission- 
field, struggling against want and temptation and 
sorrow, may be so doing her work as to prove that 
she is of the blood-royal, and her spirit puts her 
endeavor on a level with his who bears on his heart 
the redemption of the world. 

The significance of the parable of the idlers in 
the market-place is just this : The eleventh hour 
men receive the denarius equally with those who 
bore the heat and burden of the day, because 
motive counts ; the spirit with which work is done 
counts ; and the denarius is not reward, but ex- 
pression of the equal co-partnership of all who 
labor with the true mind whenever and wherever 
opportunity comes. This soldier carried the flag 
to the top of the redoubt, and fell pierced to the 
heart; that soldier pressed on and received the 
surrendered sword of the vanquished commander; 
the first not less than the last is in the full fellow- 
ship of heroes and victors. 

God measures our lives not by what we do, but 
by what we would do. The spirit is everything- 
** The mind which was in Christ Jesus " is the 
essential capability of the greatest service. 

Receiving the inspirations and impulses of this 
9 



130 The Religion of Hope. 

" mind," the soul grows great. The humblest 
worker attains a divinely attested nobility. The 
development of character is not dependent on the 
accidents or mere incidents of life. Whether 
station be high or low is relatively of little signi- 
ficance. God is at home everywhere, and the 
divine spirit domesticates himself in the lowliest 
life to make it glorious with the splendors of 
moral purpose and endeavor. Rank in this world 
is exclusive. Wealth is attainable by few. The 
aristocracy of blood, or of trade, or of letters, is 
difficult to enter. But life, the life of God, is open 
to all. There is no exclusive competition here. 
No one's gain in the sphere of the spirit is an- 
other's loss. All may enter into this fellowship, 
and all may win this prize. To enter into this 
fellowship is the true achievement. Life is pos- 
sessed and fulfilled, not in work but in purpose 
and endeavor. He who loves and aspires and 
attempts, becomes the Christ, — the servant who, 
in serving, attains and discloses the only real 
sovereignty, that sovereignty to which every knee 
in heaven and on earth bows in willing homage. 

The business of life, then, is service. The crown 
of life is being, — the Christ-like quality, the Christ- 
like power, the Christ-like joy. It does not matter 
what you do, so that while you live you serve. 
The secret of power to serve, in highest ways 
though it may be through humblest means, is the 
presence and potency in you of '* the mind which 
was also in Christ Jesus." 



VII. 

THE ENTHUSIASM OF JESUS. 



Breathe on me, Breath of God, 

Fill me with life anew. 
That I may love what thou dost love, 

And do what thou wouldst do. 

Breathe on me, Breath of God, 

Until my heart is pure. 
Until with thee I will one will, 

To do or to endure. 

Breathe on me, Breath of God, 

Till I am wholly thine, 
Till all this earthly part of me 

Glows with thy fire divine. 

Breathe on me, Breath of God, 

So shall I never die, 
But live with thee the perfect life 

Of thine eternity. 

Edwin Hatch. 



VII. 

THE ENTHUSIASM OF JESUS. 

The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. — John ii. 17. 

'T^HESE words are quoted by the Evangelist 
-*- from the Sixty-ninth Psalm, — a plaintive 
psalm that by some scholars has been ascribed to 
Jeremiah ; by others it is referred to a later time. 
Evidently it is the work of a Hebrew who was 
involved in deep trouble because of his devotion 
to the house and service of Jehovah. His ardent 
piety had awakened, or had drawn to itself, fierce 
persecution. He exclaims, — 

"For thy sake (O God of Israel) I have borne reproach, 
Confusion hath covered my face. 
I have become estranged from my brethren, 
And an alien to my mother's sons. 
For zeal for thine house hath consumed me, 
And the reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen 
upon me." ^ 

When, early in his ministry, Jesus entered the 
temple, and, in a noble rage at the desecration 
committed by greedy speculators who had invaded 
the house of prayer with their merchandise and 

1 Perowne's translation. 



134 The Religion of Hope, 

their chaffering, suddenly swept them all aside, 
over-turning their money-tables and driving out 
their cattle, the disciples, astonished beyond meas- 
ure by his boldness, instinctively recalled these 
words of an old and familiar psalm as descriptive 
of their Master's mood. Long afterward, when St. 
John dictated to some sympathetic disciple the 
story of Jesus' ministry, his mind naturally re- 
verted to the same words. 

The prophet of Nazareth, like a true Israelite, 
cherished a deep reverence for the place where the 
nation worshipped God, and he glowed with holy 
indignation at the defilement of the sanctuary 
around which clustered the solemn memories and 
hallowed traditions of a great historic faith and 
service. 

The fitness of the application of these words, 
**The zeal of thine house hath consumed me," to 
Jesus appears not only in the scene in the temple 
which St. John describes, but also in his entire 
public ministry. It is no perversion of the text to 
take it as expressive of a certain earnestness and 
intensity that marked his spirit and pervaded all 
his utterance and work. 

No one can study sympathetically the life of 
Jesus without being impressed by his deep and 
continuous enthusiasm. There was in him nothing 
of the madness and volcanic fury that sometimes 
mark the action and speech of the reformer and 
the prophet of denunciation. Whatever view we 



The Enthusiasm of Jesus. 135 

may take of his essential nature, whatever may be 
the result of our attempt to classify him, — if we 
are bold enough to make such an attempt, — every 
one of us must confess that here is a soul whose 
white light of transparent wisdom is tremulous 
with the flame of a consuming zeal. Jesus was not 
a peripatetic philosopher, calmly giving utterance 
to wise maxims and polished epigrams. He cer- 
tainly was calm ; the poise of his judgment was as 
steady as the penetration of his spiritual insight 
was sure. But his calmness was never coldness. 
His heart's red blood pulsated in all his speech, so 
that one may say of his very style, as it appears in 
the reports of the Evangelists, " It is vascular and 
alive; cut these words, and they would bleed." 
There was never a merely judicial or philosoph- 
ical interest in his view of life ; on the contrary, 
there was always an intense human interest that 
quaHfied every saying as surely as it qualified 
every act of his ministry. He had not a theory 
to inculcate, but a message to announce, and a 
work to do. In the highest and holiest sense 
of that great word, Jesus was an apostle, — orre 
sent of God. The world has long recognized 
him as a teacher — a teacher on so high a plane 
that he inevitably appropriates the title, the teacher, 
in the domain of morals and religion. Every other 
pure voice in this domain seems but a faint echo 
of his voice. Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Zoro- 
aster, Socrates, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, — it is 



136 The Religion of Hope. 

almost idle to suggest a comparison between him 
and them. We measure their elevation by the 
standard which he has furnished. But he was 
more than a teacher; so much more, indeed, that 
his teaching derives its mightiest force from his 
unique personality. His words, set to the divine 
melody of his life, are lifted to a new pitch of 
meaning, and thus command the ear and heart of 
men with an irresistible attraction, and an authority 
to which instinctively we bow, as if, in his speech, 
heaven and earth had suddenly become vocal. 
He heaves the ocean of human life in tides the 
sweep of which is measured only by the capability 
of the universal human heart to think and feel. 
" The sages and heroes of history," said Channing, 
" are receding from us, and history contracts the 
record of their deeds into a narrow and narrower 
page. But time has no power over the name and 
deeds and words of Jesus Christ." Other men 
who have been great forces in the life of the world 
find their true measure in the judgment of men at 
last. But Jesus, with every turn of the revolving 
planet, rises upon our view in more colossal pro- 
portions. We feel him in the realm of spiritual 
thought as we feel the elemental forces of nature 
in the realm of matter. He is diffused through- 
out our civilization as heat and light are diffused 
throughout the atmosphere. Yet every century 
makes him more intensely personal. A thousand 
times has critical thought analyzed his influence 



The Enthusiasm of J e sits, 137 

and defined his person, and a thousand times has 
he confronted critical thought anew with the still 
fascinating and unsolved problem. ** He walked 
in Judea eighteen hundred years ago/' wrote 
Carlyle ; " his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native 
tones, took captive the ravished souls of men, 
and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows 
and sounds, though now with thousandfold ac- 
companiments and rich symphonies, through all 
hearts, and modulates and divinely leads them." 

The very closeness of Jesus to us, not lessened, 
but rather increased, by the lapse of eighteen 
centuries, makes it difficult for us to view him 
as he was when he walked in Judea and Galilee 
and gave his message to men. There is truth 
in the saying that the world has idealized the 
peasant teacher and prophet of Nazareth. Let 
it frankly be admitted. And what does that 
mean? That the original has been exaggerated 
and falsified? No; but that men have risen in 
power to apprehend the real Christ. It was they 
who saw him only as a peasant teacher who mis- 
conceived him. The idealizing process is a pro- 
cess of discovery. Our highest thought of Jesus 
to~day, as the Son of God, the universal man, the 
concrete revelation of God in and to humanity, is 
truer to the reality of what Jesus is than the thought 
of him conceived by any of his contemporaries. 

St Paul had advanced far beyond the disciples in 
spiritual apprehension when he said: ** Yea, though 



138 The Religion of Hope. 

we have known Christ after the flesh, yet know 
we him (after the flesh) no longer." The great 
apostle was approaching, if he had not already 
quite attained, the true interpretative point of view 
to which the entire Church is slowly but surely 
coming. So, when men say that the world 
has idealized Jesus of Nazareth, I say: Yes; the 
world must idealize the Jesus of Nazareth in order 
to see him as he is, — the Christ of humanity. 
What some are pleased to call a process of ideali- 
zation is simply a process of discovery, — the result 
of growth in power of spiritual vision and compre- 
hension. If we hold closely to the spiritual line, 
and to the clearly authenticated representations 
which he makes of himself, we shall be in no 
danger of arriving at an exaggerated estimate of 
Jesus ; the chief danger always is in the oppo- 
site direction, — that of belittling him by our 
materialism.^ 

But it will aid us in apprehending the Christ in 

1 Long after these words were written, Alexander Balmain 
Bruce, D.D., in an address before the University of Chicago 
uttered these significant words : " Foremost in importance among 
the good omens [of the present time] is the intense desire of 
many among us to know the mind of the historic Jesus, and to 
give to it the authoritative place in the faith and life of the 
Church. Not a few of our best men, I fear, have been tempted 
in these years to get weary of ecclesiastical Christianity ; but 
one rarely meets with a man who is weary of Christ. The appeal 
of malcontents is rather from the Church to Christ, from modern 
presentations of the Christian religion to the religion embodied in 
the authentic sayings of the Great Master. There is as little weari- 



The Enthusiasm of yesiis. 139 

his relations to us of daily guidance and practical 
help, if we can get a clear view of him as the 
historical Christ. This for most of us is difficult, 
mainly because of our prejudices on the theological 
or anti-theological side. 

It is a singular figure which the Evangelists pre- 
sent to us, — a Galilean peasant, without the labo- 
rious and technical learning of the Rabbinical 
schools, speaking the language of the common 
people, transcending as well as contradicting the 
current ideas of God and religion and ethics, and 
exercising an authority that startled his hearers by 
its neglect of appeal to the recognized standards, 
while it commanded them by its inherent, unhesi- 
tating imperativeness. As we study him in his 
original setting of race and political condition and 
religious institutions, there are many aspects both 
of his personality and of his teaching that strongly 



ness of Jesus Christ as there is of nature, of the world revealed to 
us by the eye and the ear. 

" After many disenchantments, multiplying with the years of our 
life, these two objects, Jesus and nature, retain their charm un- 
abated, growing rather as old age steals on. What is true of the 
individual Christian is not less true of Christendom at large. It is 
going on to two millenniums since Christ was born, but that event, 
and the life it ushered in, are not losing their attraction through the 
long lapse of time. Rather Christ is being born anew amongst 
us ; through scientific study, devout thought, and loving endeavor 
at imaginative realization, his life and ministry are being enacted 
over again, insomuch that it may be said with truth that the Hero 
of the gospel story is better known to day, and more intelligently 
estimated than he ever has been since the Christian era began." 



140 The Religion of Hope. 

solicit our attention. All these, for the present, I 
pass by, and ask you to consider for a few minutes 
that quality which has notable expression in the 
text, — his deep and unquenchable enthusiasm. 

It is characteristic of our cool and critical time 
— a time in which we analyze our most sacred 
emotions with something of the nonchalance with 
which we analyze a flower or a muscle — that the 
very word enthusiasm, as well as the quality which 
it expresses, has fallen somewhat into contempt. 
That one is enthusiastic is sufficient evidence to 
many that he is weak or unwise. Some writers on 
the life of Jesus even have declared as proof of his 
limitation and defect that he was an enthusiast. 
But may not this contempt for enthusiasm be a 
proof rather of defect in those who indulge the 
contempt? The cynic scoffs at the gentle fervors 
of friendship. The misanthrope sneers at the 
impassioned utterance of human love. With all 
their learning and astuteness, — their encyclopaedic 
sciences and multiform worldly wisdom, — how 
many have ice at their hearts, and what they call 
coolness of judgment is often the chill that attests 
the death of their holiest sentiments and purest 
passions ! 

He alone reads history aright who sees that 
" every great and commanding movement in the 
annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm." 
Some one, in discussing a question of theology, — 
so solemn a question as that of future retribution, 



The Enthusiasm of Jesus. 141 

— said : " Sentiment is ruled out of court." This 
sentence is tell-tale. When sentiment is ruled out 
of theology and enthusiasm out of life, what wonder 
that men ask: *' Is life worth living?" 

Yes, Jesus was an enthusiast. A divine passion 
glowed in his breast, and a divine ideal thrilled and 
enticed him. That divine passion was the infinite 
love of God which he not so much felt and ex- 
pressed as embodied. He was the love of God 
become concrete and personal. The object of his 
love was humanity, and the whole significance and 
worth of humanity he saw represented in the indi- 
vidual soul. The philanthropist often regards the 
multitude at the expense of the individual ; but in 
Jesus was such particularness joined with such uni- 
versality of love, and such sanity blended with such 
fervor, that, by that love, every individual soul is 
given a new quality and set in the light of a new 
meaning; while, at the same time, mankind in the 
mass receives a great exaltation. We call the love 
of Jesus a *' divine passion " because it had in it, as 
the word implies, the capacity and the experience 
of suffering. The love of the greater for the less, 
of the good for the evil, must have this capacity 
and experience. Toward man his love was a hun- 
ger for souls, " as of space to be filled with planets ;" 
toward God his love was the answer of immeasur- 
able sky, in the deep mirror of the unrippled lake, 
to immeasurable sky above. 

The love of Christ bore within itself the absolute 



142 The Religion of Hope, 

reasonableness of the divine goodness ; and he had 
the enthusiasm of such a love. That enthusiasm 
never flagged. It never burst into fierce heats of 
self-consuming passion. It was a steady, pure 
flame that no atmosphere of ignorant hate could 
chill, no gust of temptation extinguish, and no 
deluge of sorrow quench. It illumined all the way 
toward love's utmost achievement, and brightened 
even the seeming defeat on Calvary with the fore- 
gleam of an everlasting triumph. 

Through all the detail of his ministry we feel the 
glow of this constant enthusiasm, — in his miracles 
of healing, his sayings to his disciples and to 
the multitude, his journeyings and his devotions. 
Everywhere his love reveals itself and pours its 
warmth into speech and deed. 

But the enthusiasm of Jesus was the product of 
a divine ideal as well as of a divine passion. At 
the very beginning of his ministry he uttered a 
word that has ever increasing significance not only 
through his earthly life, but also through all the 
succeeding centuries of his ministry in the spirit 
to the world. That word was, *' the Kingdom." 
The kingdom of God was the ideal. The prayer 
which Jesus gave to his disciples, and to humanity, 
is significant above all in this, that its first petition 
is, '* Thy kingdom come." The revelation of God, 
the communication of God, and the realization of 
God in human life, not in the individual alone, but 
also in society, in the corporate hfe of mankind, is 



The Enthusiasm of Jesus. 143 

the end toward which Jesus constantly moved. No 
such ideal, save in broken, prophetic hints, had 
ever before shaped itself in the heart of teacher or 
prophet. Everywhere Jesus carried with him the 
thought, the spirit, and the purpose of the king- 
dom, — of humanity redeemed and spiritualized 
and unfolded into the perfect organic expression of 
the indwelling divine wisdom, righteousness, and 
love. He commissioned his disciples to preach 
** The kingdom of heaven is at hand." His para- 
bles cluster about *' the kingdom " as their chiefest 
theme. An earthly crown he refused, but, as the 
Son of God, he claimed kingship in the realm of 
the truth. 

His idea of the kingdom is more than that of a 
faint and far ideal. In his mind the kingdom is 
not something to come, so much as it is the abso- 
lute reality that is, and is appearing; and its ap- 
pearing is the process of the salvation of the world. 
Jesus' thought of the kingdom of God is the key 
to the interpretation of history. 

Alone in Judea, alone in the world, the Son of 
God lived and spoke " and wrought with human 
hands " at the mighty task of the world's salvation; 
and, through all the centuries since, in proportion 
to the clearness of their spiritual vision and the 
depth of their spiritual feeling, men have felt the 
inspiration of his divine ideal, the powerful attrac- 
tion of his love, and the quickening glow of his 
enthusiasm. 



144 The Religion of Hope. 

But we are not simply studying a character that 
excites our curious and admiring, perhaps sym- 
pathetic, interest. Jesus Christ is come into the 
world to be the Saviour of men, and, in fulfilling 
his mission as Saviour, he is their supreme exem- 
plar. He is more than exemplar whom we are 
to imitate : he is inspirer also, awakening in us 
motives, as well as setting us a pattern. " To as 
many as received him, to them gave he power 
to become sons of God." In fellowship of faith 
and love with him the nominal sonship of man to 
God became real and vital. That is the testimony 
of all deep Christian experience. 

We are called to be followers of Jesus, to live ac- 
cording to his spirit and to seek his ends. But to 
how many this discipleship is a mere formality, — a 
matter of phrases and ceremonies, — and this ser- 
vice an ill-disguised and loveless drudgery. Many 
of us, as far as our religious relations and duties 
are concerned, are in a chill and leaden frame of 
mind. We are fretted by care, fevered by discon- 
tent, and consumed by covetous desire; but no 
zeal for God has " eaten us up." Whatever we do 
in the way of out-going religious action is done by 
a dead lift. We do not move by a strong inward 
impulsion, the source of which is higher than an 
uneasy conscience that fitfully wields the scourge. 
Sometimes, driven by tormenting compunctions 
and fears, we struggle by sheer force of will into 
an artificial fervor of speech, and then we utter 



The Ethiisiasm of Jesus. 145 

religious commonplaces in a simulated passion, — 
words " full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 
Sometimes, roused to a sense of shame, and 
unwilling for the moment any longer to seem what 
in our heart of hearts we know we are not, we sink 
into despondency, longing for some force to come 
upon us from without, and strike or sting us into a 
condition of sensibility. Any one who can make 
us feel and weep is welcome. 

Thus a transient mood of religiousness is gen- 
erated, which by and by passes away, leaving our 
souls more arid and feeble than before. 

I describe the condition of some who can always 
be found in the Church of Christ. Indeed, most 
of us, at some time, have known this condition 
in our own experience. What we need, what all 
who would follow and serve Jesus Christ need, is a 
vital and inexhaustible enthusiasm. But the objec- 
tion may be urged that one cannot always be in a 
state of fervor. The human sensibility will not bear 
a continuous excitation. The very objection be- 
trays the radical misconception in the mind of him 
who makes it. Of Jesus it was said, " The zeal of 
thine house hath consumed me;" and these words 
described, in its degree at least, not a permanent, 
but a transient mood. But the mood which they 
describe was only the momentary intense expres- 
sion of a continuous capability of feeling, the sud- 
den, transient swelling of a continuous current of 
emotion. The enthusiasm of Jesus gives us the 



146 The Religion of Hope. 

clew to our need. In his life there were moments 
of intensified feeling and impassioned utterance ; 
but the continuous main-current of his life flowed 
on with a calmness and persistence like that of the 
Gulf Stream in the ocean. Such enthusiasm as his 
we need ; such enthusiasm, in some degree, we all 
may have ; but we can have it only as we have in 
our hearts the steady and pure warmth of a divine 
love, and before us the inspiring atttraction of a 
divine ideal. The love of God as fundamental 
motive, and the kingdom of God as supreme end, — • 
these, conceived and felt with ever-growing capa- 
city to conceive and feel, will impart to us an en- 
thusiasm in living for God and for humanity that 
cannot suffer exhaustion or defeat. 

There is no true work ever done without enthu- 
siasm. The artist whose heart is cold is a mere 
artisan. The student of science who works with no 
great humane enthusiasm for knowledge is only a 
mechanism more delicately organized than his 
microscope or his magnetic battery. The statesman 
who is simply a calculating player with human 
pawns on the chessboard of a nation or a political 
party, is less a man than the humblest citizen whom 
the impulse of patriotism urges to the daily dis- 
charge of civic duty, or pushes on to the battle's 
front in the hour of his country's peril. The 
deepest secret of life, as well the mightiest force of 
life, is love. Without love there is no enthusiasm, 
and without ideals there is no enthusiasm. We 



The Enthusiasm of Jesus. 147 

freeze our hearts by selfishness and stifle them by 
sordidness ; we fix our eyes upon the little field 
circumscribed by our day's activities and ends; 
with no wide-reaching affection and no uplifting 
ideal, we make of our hfe a treadmill, and of our 
duty an unwelcome drudgery; we disclaim the 
highest endowment of the soul and deny our son- 
ship to God. Narrow faiths and narrow hopes put 
fetters on the spirit, and small affections keep 
small the heart and low the temperature of Hfe. 

Oh, friends, lift up your hearts to God, that 
he may make them large with his love. ** I will 
run in the way of thy Commandments, when thou 
shalt enlarge my heart," exclaimed the Hebrew 
Psalmist. Open your eyes to the meaning and 
breadth and beauty of God's kingdom, and the 
glorious vision will stimulate you to high thoughts 
and noble endeavors, and your hearts will be re- 
freshed with surprising revelations of life's loveli- 
ness and worth. Learn to see the individual by 
your side and the ever widening circle of human 
souls about you in the light of Christ's enterprise 
for the world and God's intention toward humanity. 
Give room for the love of God as motive, and 
apprehend the kingdom of God as ideal, and no 
more can the daily task seem trivial, the daily 
opportunity small, and the daily sorrow vain ; no 
more will your spirit be *' cribbed and cabined " 
by hopeless care; no more will beauty vanish 
from the earth and glory fade from the sky; no 



148 The Religion of Hope, 

more will you creep and crawl, the companion of 
grovelling thoughts; but a great sweetness and 
peace will come into your hearts, and a pure, un- 
wasting enthusiasm will make service a joy and 
life a triumphal march. 

" What then ? A shadowy valley, lone and dim, 
And then a deep and darkly rolling river ; 
And then a flood of light, a seraph hymn, 
And God's own smile forever and forever ! " 



VIII. 

CHRISTIAN UNITY. 



The ancient barriers disappear : 

Down bow the mountains high ; 
The sea-divided shores draw near 

In a world's unity. 

One life together we confess, 

One all-indweUing Word, 
One holy Call to righteousness 

Within the silence heard : 

One Law that guides the shining spheres 

As on through space they roll, 
And speaks in flaming characters 

On Sinais of the soul: 

One Love, unfathomed, measureless. 

An ever-flowing sea. 
That holds within its vast embrace 

Time and eternity. 

Frederick L. Hosmer. 



VIII. 

CHRISTIAN UNITY. 

That they all may be one ; even as thou, Father, art in me, and 
I in thee, that they also may be in us : that the world may believe 
that thou didst send me. — John xvii. 21. 

'TPHE prayer of Jesus expresses an ideal and 
-*- prophesies the reaHzation of the ideal. That 
ideal is a unity of his followers with one another 
and with God, like the unity of the Son with the 
Father. It is not a mere agreement, but a fellow- 
ship as deep and strong as life. It is an incorpo- 
ration into a common life, the spirit and impulse 
and law of which are the love of God. 

At the outset there are two things to note. 
First : Jesus, in his prayer, contemplates the whole 
Christian world. The text is preceded by the 
the words, ''Neither for these only {i.e., the dis- 
ciples) do I pray, but for them also that believe 
in me through their word ; " and the petition dis- 
tinctly implies an ultimate universal accession to 
the faith, — " that the world may believe that thou 
didst send me." Second: the unity for which 
Jesus prays is the means by which the fulfilment 
of the prophecy implied in his prayer is to be 



152 The Religion of Hope. 

attained. The oneness of believers in Christ with 
one another and with God will effect the universal 
belief in the divine mission of Jesus and the con- 
sequent fulfilment of that mission. 

There is a splendid daring in the pretensions of 
primitive Christianity. The early Christians were 
limited in their out-look by hastily formed and 
superficial ideas concerning the second coming of 
Christ; yet they anticipated the triumph of the 
gospel in all the world. St. Paul, the greatest of all 
those upon whom was laid the task of promulgat- 
ing the gospel, again and again confesses his faith 
in the destined universality of that gospel. This 
daring the early Church caught from the sayings 
of Jesus and from the ever-growing significance 
to them of his life and death and resurrection. 
In subsequent centuries the Church has not always 
been true to the first prophetic forecast and 
confidence. Sometimes overcome by a mephitic 
worldliness, sometimes depressed by a morbid con- 
sciousness of its apparent inadequacy to the mighty 
task laid upon it, and sometimes possessed by a 
narrowing selfishness in its interpretation of the 
divine purpose in creation and in human history, 
it has deliberately shaped its theology to a limited 
enterprise and elaborated a dogma of defeat ; but 
always somewhat of the courage and hopefulness 
of the early faith has survived. 

In the first small beginnings of the Church the 
idea of unity existed rather as a sentiment and ex- 



Christian Unity. 153 

perience than as an aim. The early beHevers were 
one in faith, in joy, in endeavor, and in hope ; but 
soon differences arose, and these quickly grew into 
divergences, so that even in St. Paul's time there 
were embryonic, and even, as in the case of the 
Judaizers, almost fully developed sects. Yet from 
the beginning Christians have cherished an ideal 
of unity, and in various ways, 'through the ages, 
they have sought to realize this ideal. 

Very early the blunder was made of confounding 
unity with uniformity. The persecutions of dis- 
senters by the Church that have marked almost 
the entire Christian history since 325 a. d., though 
due to various causes, were, in large part, expres- 
sions of the persistent desire for unity, and of 
attempts to secure it. That the Church must be 
semper et nbique — always and everywhere — one 
was a dominant conviction. The type of unity 
sought varied, according as the dogmatical, or the 
sacramental and ritual, or the ecclesiastical and 
administrative tendency was strongest. As deter- 
mined by these tendencies, therefore, the unity 
sought has been (i) dogmatic, or (2) ritual, or 
(3) ecclesiastical. 

The failure to realize completely any one of 
these types has been notorious. There never has 
been dogmatic unity; certainly never since the 
beginning of the fourth century. The Council of 
Nicsea, the first Ecumenical Council, which was 
called to secure and preserve dogmatic unity, 



154 The Religion of Hope. 

witnessed the crisis and the new beginning of a 
strife that divided the Church for several centuries 
between Arian and Athanasian. Council followed 
council in rapid succession, and each was more 
fruitless than its predecessor in the effort to secure 
the coveted end. For some centuries there was 
an approach to ritual and ecclesiastical unity; yet 
even that was not co-extensive with the entire 
Church, and was more seeming than real. In the 
religious upheaval of the sixteenth century the 
Western Church, which had been long separated 
from the Eastern Church, was rent into fragments 
even more numerous than the nations that revolted, 
wholly, like England, or in part, like Germany, 
from the Church of Rome. 

What is the state of the Church to-day, with 
respect to these types of unity — unity that is 
confounded with uniformity? There are many 
different 'creeds, and different interpretations of 
the same creed ; widely different sects, and dif- 
ferent theories of ritual and ecclesiastical order 
in the same sect. The failure thus far to secure 
doctrinal, or sacramental, or administrative uni- 
formity in the entire Church has been complete. 
Christianity has not failed ; it has spread wider 
and penetrated deeper and grown more powerful 
continually. The elemental gospel of Christ is in 
the present time as manifestly and as mightily 
"the power of God unto salvation" as at any time 
in the past. We may go even farther, and say 



Christian Unity. 155 

that essential Christianity has a profounder influ- 
ence on the heart and mind of humanity than ever 
it has had. 

Now, what is the reason of the failure to which 
I have referred? The question is exceedingly 
interesting, and its answer is not difficult to find. 

I. In the first place, Dogmatic unity requires 
universal assent to certain detailed and sharply 
defined propositions. But men will think in- 
dividually; they have done so in every other 
field, and they will do so in the religious field. 
Thought cannot be coerced. Under certain con- 
ditions the expression of thought may be regu- 
lated or even suppressed ; but the moment the 
mind begins to act it illustrates that freedom of 
the will which, however strenuously it may be de- 
nied by a school of philosophers, is a dictum of 
consciousness. Of course thought is never inde- 
pendent of those conditions, existing in heredity, 
habit, and environment, which shape both the in- 
dividual and the collective life; but within the 
sphere of these conditions, in the very nature of 
the case, thought is unrestrained and unrestrain- 
able. Besides there are certain fundamental laws 
that inevitably govern the mind's action. Man 
may be trained or persuaded to a certain uniform- 
ity of belief, but the uniformity is always precarious 
because of the force of individuality in thinking. 

Then, too, the world grows. New facts, new 
points of view, and new ideas, born of increasing 



156 The Religion of Hope. 

knowledge or changing experience, require con- 
tinual modification of formulas. Such modifica- 
tion is written all over the history of theology. 
Dogmatic unity could scarcely be secured before 
it would be broken. Growth is fatal to uniformity. 
The tendency of progress is toward ever-increasing 
diversity. That tendency is specially marked in 
great and critical revolts from established ortho- 
doxy, as, for example, in the Protestant Reforma- 
tion of the sixteenth century, and in the very real, 
though unnamed, Reformation, in our own time. 

The diversity of theological view which has pre- 
vailed with increasing force during the past three 
hundred and fifty years is charged by Roman 
Catholic writers to Protestantism ; and on this 
ground Roman Catholic writers have invoked 
from all religious people the condemnation of 
Protestantism. But Protestantism is simply a 
name for a spirit or tendency in the world. The 
diversity should be charged not to Protestantism but 
to progress. If Luther had not broken the soli- 
darity of the Roman Church in Europe, some one 
else would have broken it. The awakening mind 
that revealed itself in the Revival of Learning and 
in the new spirit of discovery and enterprise which 
had its remote spring, in part, in the Crusades, in- 
evitably, sooner or later, must have disrupted the 
fetters of the defective religious ideas as well as of 
the defective political and scientific ideas which 
had so long held Europe in bondage. But is there 



Christian Unity. 157 

not, in the intellectual life of men, a tendency 
toward unity? Yes, but it is unity in simple, ele- 
mental principles. As in nature there is a unity 
of law underlying limitless diversity of manifesta- 
tion, as in species there is unity of type underlying 
great variety of feature and function, so in the world 
of mind there is the unity of fundamental principles 
of reason and morality as the regulative basis of 
astonishing diversity of idea and expression. In 
the realm of religious thought no creed has yet 
been devised at once simple and comprehensive 
enough to furnish a perfectly satisfactory basis for 
dogmatic unity. Not even that noble symbol, 
" the Apostle's Creed," is adequate. 

2. In the second place, Ritual unity requires 
the universal acceptance of certain definite rites 
which fully and agreeably express the religious 
sentiments and adequately meet the aesthetico- 
religious needs of men. But men have differing 
needs and susceptibilities and tastes. The same 
man has different susceptibilities and tastes at 
different times in his life. Rites appeal differently 
to different temperaments and different moods. 
Some people are exceedingly dependent on the 
expression of religion in forms and ceremonies 
and mystical emblems; some find these not only 
not a help but even a hindrance. This is not the 
place to discuss the question of the authority of 
rites, but I may observe in passing that the two 
which unquestionably have their source, as per- 



158 The Religion of Hope. 

taining to Christianity, in distinct acts and words 
of Jesus Christ have authority only so far as they 
are truly ministrant to the spiritual life of men. 
Even these, Baptism and the Communion, dear and 
sacred as they may be to us, have no permanent 
reason of being in themselves, nor even in their 
original; for the moment they usurp the place of 
ends in the religious life they become a "snare," 
like the brazen serpent in Israel. The reason of 
their perpetuity lies in their real usefulness to the 
spirit. They have no such position of enduring 
authority as that which belongs to elemental 
spiritual truths. Now, in the main, the various 
divisions of the Church, in their differing esti- 
mates and use of rites, at once express and sat- 
isfy the religious differences in men. But it is safe 
to say that there are people in all churches to-day 
who by sentiment and need belong elsewhere than 
where they are. 

As a matter of fact, the ritual diversities in the 
Church run all the way from the bare simplicity of 
the Friends to the elaborate ceremonialism of the 
High Church Episcopalians or the Roman Catho- 
lics. Uniformity in the use of rites does not exist 
save within comparatively narrow circles. 

3. In the third place. Ecclesiastical unity de- 
mands adherence to a certain fixed organization 
and administrative order. But the churches exhibit 
nearly as wide differences in polity as they do in 
creed or ceremonial, and the differences are due to 



Christian Unity. 159 

much the same causes as those which render dog- 
matic conceptions and ritual observances various. 
The element of individuality is as powerful, as irre- 
sistible, in the practical as it is in the theoretical 
realm. Differences of ecclesiastical order and ad- 
ministration are due, in part, to the same causes 
as those which make civil order and administration 
various. Political tendencies and forms undoubt- 
edly affect ecclesiastical ideas and methods. For 
example, democracy is unfavorable to a hierarchy; 
at least, it is far less favorable than absolute mon- 
archy. Roman Catholicism has been consistent 
with its fundamental idea in supporting a monar- 
chical form of government. Roman Catholicism 
in America, instead of being an exception, proves 
the rule. It has been confessedly strong, and, 
until recently, reactionary, partly because of its 
historic genius, and partly because it has been re- 
cruited continually from countries in which men are 
trained in its fundamental ideas of authority and ad- 
ministration. Yet in America it is changing, slowly 
but surely moving toward democracy. It feels 
the stimulus of freedom and the moulding force of 
the eager life about it; and inevitably, if slowly, 
is modifying its peculiarities. The Roman Church 
is one thing in Spain ; it is quite another thing here 
in America. Congregationalism is the creation of 
men bred with the instincts and passions of liberty. 
It is strongest where political liberty is greatest, as 
in England and America. Congregationalism com- 



i6o The Religion of Hope. 

prehends, of course, not only other bodies than that 
one technically designated Congregationlist, as for 
example, the Unitarian and Baptist denominations, 
but also bodies in which the Congregational prin- 
ciple has great influence. 

Now, Ecclesiastical unity requires universal as- 
sent to a certain type of Ecclesiastical organization. 
But where is the type? The absolutely compre- 
hensive type does not exist. Not all men will 
become Roman Catholics, though many men can- 
not as yet be anything else. Not all will become 
Episcopalians, nor Congregationalists or Baptists, 
nor Methodists or Presbyterians. Each of the 
polities represented in these various denominations, 
or groups of denominations, has enormous defects. 
Few thoughtful men are perfectly satisfied with 
the church of which they are members. This is 
not due to mere discontent with their peculiar sit- 
uation or relations. It simply shows that the ideal 
is larger and other than the real. 

All sects and denominations are in the nature 
of the case transient; they express conditions and 
moods and present necessities of the great social 
mind and heart. They may last long; they doubt- 
less will last long; but the longer they last the 
greater will be the modifications through which 
they will pass. What will those modifications be? 
They will be rnodifications of such peculiarities as 
are extreme and divisive; not merely of those that 
simply appeal to different tastes, but of those that 



Christian Unity. i6i 

separate and excite revolt. Churches will modify 
toward each other. 

As no sociologist has yet given us the type of 
society to which we shall attain in our social pro- 
gress, — though types have been fashioned with 
great skill and insight, from Plato's Republic to 
Bellamy's Co-operative Commonwealth, — so no 
ecclesiologist has shown, and no denomination 
exhibits, the type of a Universal Church ; while 
all denominations have elements and features that 
will belong to the Church of the future and of 
humanity. 

So far our study has been descriptive and crit- 
ical, and perhaps oppressively negative. Let us 
turn to the positive side. What, then, is the unity 
for which we may rationally hope? What is the 
unity toward which, under the leadership of Christ, 
we are surely moving? I venture no prophecy as 
to organization. Organization will conform to 
spirit and life. 

The unity to which the whole Christian Church 
must come, is (i) the Unity of Obedience to the 
law of love. 

" Show me a church," said Abraham Lincoln, 
** whose creed is love and I will join it." The 
Church that shall endure must be one whose law 
is love, — love to God and love to man. That law 
has its supreme exemplification in Jesus Christ. 
He is the head of the body, not only by historic 
divine ordination, but also by inherent spiritual 



1 62 The Religion of Hope. 

fitness. The rallying point of the whole Christian 
world to-day is not a creed, nor an ordinance, nor 
an ecclesiastical principle, but Jesus Christ; not 
dogmatic conceptions of him, nor dogmatic formu- 
las about him and his plan of salvation, — as to 
these men differ and will differ, — but the living, 
loving, mighty personality. The unity in him is 
not devotion to a school, but love to his divine- 
human self, with all that he expresses of revelation 
from God in terms of human life and character^ 
and loyalty to his spirit of truth and righteousness 
and love. 

The unity to which the whole Christian Church 
must come is (2) the Unity of Devotion to Christ's 
aim: the salvation of men from ignorance and 
despair and sin, the ennobling of life by the dis- 
closure of its divine possibilities, and the realiza- 
tion in the world of the Kingdom of God. 

On this broad basis all men who love God can 
unite. By this powerful attraction all are drawn 
together. Selfishness, whether of the individual or 
of the society, divrdes; love unites. The enter- 
prise of pure and self-sacrificing benevolence draws 
into its current all streams of moral activity. 
The perpetuation and extension of a sect or de- 
nomination is not a true end, save instru mentally. 
We seek to develop a strong denomination, as we 
seek to develop a strong family, for the service 
of the community, the nation, and the race. But in 
the family-idea there is a permanency which is not 



Christian Unity. 163 

in the denomination-idea. Our great aim as Chris- 
tians is not to transform men into so many more 
Episcopalians, or Unitarians, or Baptists, or Metho- 
dists, or Congregationalists ; but into so many more 
Christians — so many more men and women and 
children who know and love God, and are ruled 
by the spirit that is in Christ; so much more of 
Christ's redemptive work done through his body 
which is the Church Universal; so much more of 
the realized Kingdom of God. 

The law of love and the enterprise of love strike 
deeper than all forms of dogma or ritual or eccle- 
siastical organization. The appeal of these is to the 
deepest that is in the heart and soul of humanity. 

What will result from pre-eminently seeking this 
unity? There will result. First: the recognition 
of similarity beneath diversity. Among lovers of 
Christ and God and humankind differences of creed 
and ritual and polity will grow like differences in 
feature and accent and dress, giving picturesqueness, 
perhaps, to life, but raising no bar to sympathy 
and fellowship. There will result. Second: the 
permanent change of emphasis from the incidental 
and the inferential to the essential, leaving free 
play for diversity in thought and method. There 
will result Third : the establishment of such rela- 
tions between different churches and denominations 
as will consolidate their energy and economize 
their force in the great and absorbing work of 
spiritualizing men and Christianizing society and 



164 The Religion of Hope. 

the world. The present economic wastefulness of 
the Church, through excessive individuahsm and 
consequent disunity, is lamentable if not criminal. 
There will result Fourth : the development of a vast 
moral and spiritual power over society. The Church 
has vast power even now, but its power is little com- 
pared with what it might be. How much of benefi- 
cent force is now unutilized and incapable of 
being utilized by the Church ! How much of 
culture — not dilettante culture, but real, solid 
culture — is now separated from the Church and 
unsympathetic with it ! The remedy for this is to 
be found in a fuller spiritual life expressed and 
operant in a more vital unity. The early Chris- 
tians were victorious because of that spirit which 
made observers exclaim : *' How these Christians 
love one another ! " If we are one in love and 
unselfish service for all men ; if we are one as Christ 
is one with the Father; we shall move upon the 
consciousness and heart of the world with an 
undreamed-of power. 

Still more, the unity of the Church in obedience 
to the law of love, and in devotion to the aim of 
Christ, must have the subjective result of deepening 
and purifying the inner life of the Church, of clari- 
fying its thought of God, and of developing a 
theology that shall be as profound and as compre- 
hensive as its love. Unity in love precedes and 
produces, not follows, unity in thought. *' He that 
desires to do the will of God " — that is love reach- 



Christian Unity. 165 

ing forth into action — " shall know of the doctrine." 
We must live more soundly in order to think more 
truly. Love leads us into the head of Christ and 
of God, and from the heart of God we read the 
deep secret of His eternal purpose. 

But what shall we say of such strong move- 
ments toward Church unity as are indicated by 
the " Lambeth Articles," issued by the Protestant 
Episcopal Church of the United States and the 
Church of England, and the propositions of the 
National Council of the Congregational Churches 
of the United States? We must hail them with 
thankfulness and revived courage. They show 
that the spirit of Christ, which is in his people, 
is striving toward fuller and more harmonious 
expression in the organic life and activities of the 
entire Church. It is too early to predict, with 
any confidence, the result of these movements ; 
but it is not too bold to affirm that they are signs 
of a new consciousness developing in Christendom^ 
and to believe that they point to a unity of the 
Church, in the near future, closer, more vital and 
more beneficently influential on the life of the 
world than any that has been attained in the past. 

While welcoming these tokens of a better day, 
we must turn our minds afresh to the primal 
spring of all true life and all true thought, and 
to the creative principle and energy of a radical 
and enduring unity. The influence of Jesus Christ 
draws all who discern his spirit into the unity of 



1 66 The Religion of Hope. 

love for God and man, and that unity finds ever 
richer expression in the great engagements of 
Christian worship and work. 

Slowly but surely the dawn of a new day bright- 
ens our sky. With rejoicing we behold the un- 
mistakable signs of the time, — signs that, through 
all the strife over Scriptures and creeds, and even 
by means of this strife, God is leading mankind 
to a deeper life of the soul in him and a clearer 
understanding and a larger appropriation of the 
spirit and purpose of Christ. 

Beneath all the multifarious diversity of ideas 
in the Church, there is already a common life of 
thought, sympathy, mutual understanding, and 
mutual impulse toward the one great end for 
which the Church exists. There is a powerful 
movement in human society toward real rehgion. 
There is a drawing together of hearts and minds 
toward the divine centre of life. There is a vast 
unuttered prayer in the very throes and strivings 
of modern society which, as it grows articulate, 
voices itself in the words, ''Thy kingdom come. 
Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth." God 
speed the day when all men shall say with deep- 
ening faith and love : " I belong to the Church 
Universal, — the body of Christ, the Family of 
God." Let us hasten the coming of that day by 
yielding ever more complete obedience to the 
divine law of love and by increasing devotion to 
the one great unifying aim of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Amen. 



IX. 

THE CHURCH, THE BODY OF CHRIST. 



One holy Church of God appears 

Through every age and race, 
Unwasted by the lapse of years, 

Unchanged by changing place. 

From oldest time, on farthest shores. 

Beneath the pine or palm, 
One Unseen Presence she adores, 

With silence, or with psalm. 

Her priests are all God's faithful sons, 

To serve the world raised up ; 
The pure in heart, her baptized ones ; 

Love, her communion cup. 

The truth is her prophetic gift, 

The soul her sacred page ; 
And feet on mercy's errand swift. 

Do make her pilgrimage. 

O living Church, thine errand speed. 

Fulfil thy task sublime ; 
With bread of life earth's hunger feed; 

Redeem the evil time. 
' Samuel Longfellow. 



IX. 

THE CHURCH, THE BODY OF CHRIST. 

Now ye are the body of Christ. — i Cor. xii. 27. 

OUCH is the significant figure by which St. Paul 
^^ represents the Christian Church. He con- 
ceives the Church not as a formal institution or 
structure, and certainly not as a mere aggregation- 
of believers, but as a living organism of which 
Christ is at once the head and the animating soul. 
His fundamental idea of the individual Christian 
life, as consisting in union with Christ, appears in 
his idea of the Church. 

Jesus used the vine as a figure of his relation 
to his disciples: they were branches unified in 
himself, the vine, and vitalized by the life which 
he supplied. The two figures have an essential 
similarity. The element of vital unity is funda- 
mental in both. In the one figure, the branches 
are knit into the vine; they draw their life from 
the vine ; they cannot exist, certainly cannot be 
fruitful, apart from the vine. In the other figure 
the members cohere in one body, share a common 
life, and fulfil their various functions under the 



I/O The Religion of Hope. 

directive impulse of one head. The figure of the 
apostle, used for a purpose somewhat different 
from that of the Master, is more specifically a 
concrete representation of the Church as an or- 
ganic agent in the world. 

Jesus did not write a book nor create an in- 
stitution ; he imparted a life which naturally and 
spontaneously became organic in the Church. 
Individual Christians have functions as various 
as their capabilities and opportunities, but they 
all cohere in one body that has one head and is 
animated by one life. This primary truth does 
not conflict with the administrative independence 
of the local church, but it is easy to see that the 
doctrine of independence pressed too far divides 
Christ. The Church is representative of Christ in 
just so far as, in the exercise of its proper functions 
as the body of Christ, it embodies his spirit, man- 
ifests his life, and fulfils his mission. It perpetu- 
ates the personal touch of the Lord who once 
moved among men, the concrete expression of 
divine wisdom and holiness and love. Its life is an 
immediate, continuous gift. Its authority is de- 
rived not through a long succession of priestly con- 
secrations, but through immediate communion — 
a continuous interior contact — with Christ. 

There is immense value in historic continuity, 
but the real authority of the Church does not 
repose in that. The Church lives because Christ 
lives ; his life in it is the essential condition of its 



The Clmrch, the Body of Christ. i/i 

perpetuity. Ordinances, offices, and creeds are 
incidents; the life of Christ is essence. 

What makes a church — an apostle? But 
churches were founded in Antioch and Rome, and 
doubtless in other places, without the presence 
or even knowledge of an apostle. Does a bishop 
constitute a church? A bishop is but the creature 
and functionary of the Church. Is it a Declaration 
of Faith, a meeting-house, a set of officers and 
a periodical service that constitute a church? No; 
it is Christ, the informing life and law of a body 
of people who are doing Christ's work and living 
out his principles in the world. The presence of 
the divine Spirit is the only essential constituting 
force and the only absolutely valid consecration. 

Now, then, if the Church is the body of Christ, 
what is its function? What is it to do? What is 
it for? This question is asked to-day, in a hun- 
dred practical ways, with an insistence never so 
strong before. It must be answered, and the only 
answer that can successfully endure the trial to 
which it is subjected by human experience and 
needs, as well as the searching criticism^of awak- 
ened and penetrating intelligence, is the Church's 
visible embodiment of Christ's thought and spirit, 
and its demonstrable fulfilment of Christ's purpose 
among men. Christ as the head of the body rules 
and directs the Church. Christ as the innermost 
spring of the Church's life determines its character 
and its work. 



1/2 The Religion of Hope. 

Let us look at the figure and the truth which it 
presents to our minds more closely. The body is 
the instrument of the informing soul. It expresses 
the temper and executes the behests of the soul. 
When the soul is gone the body is dead: under 
the influence of certain stimulants or irritants it 
may simulate life, but it is dead. 

The figure, like all figures of spiritual fact or 
truth, is inadequate; it is suggestive, but not ex- 
haustive. The human body has no independent 
will; it cannot revolt against or utterly disregard 
the dictates of the mind, though through lack of 
discipline it may hinder the mind; of itself it has 
no volitional power. The Church as a body may 
revolt against or disregard the will of Christ, as 
well as, through lack of discipline, imperfectly 
execute or even impede his will. But when it thus 
revolts against Christ it ceases any longer to be 
the body of Christ. Being the body it is instru- 
mental, it is subject to the soul. 

The Church as the body of Christ exists : — 

(i) To express the spirit of Christ toward God 
and toward men. 

(2) To utter the message of Christ from God to 
men. 

(3) To do the work of Christ — to carry on the 
divine reparative and redemptive activity within 
and upon the hearts, minds, bodies, and estates 
of men. 

I. In the first place, then, the Church is to ex- 



The Churchy the Body of Christ. 173 

press the Spirit of CJirist. It is to express the 
spirit of Christ toward the Father: the spirit of 
reverence and worship toward the Infinite Good- 
ness and HoHness; the spirit of trust through 
every experience whether of sorrow or joy; the 
spirit of obedience to every command, and of sub- 
missiveness under every trial; the spirit of happy 
confidence in God, of fihal communion, of thank- 
fulness and praise. 

As the features and hands of Jesus, as his whole 
form was obedient to his feeling and thought, — 
now bowed in prayer, now uplifted in adoration, — 
so the Church is to express in its attitude toward 
God the indwelling spirit of Christ. If the Church 
is irreverent, w^anting the true impulse of worship, 
so that its prayer and praise are not natural and 
sincere; if it is distrustful and indocile; if it is 
indifferent or resistant to the influences of the 
Holy Spirit, is it not misrepresenting Christ? 
What is the motive that impels us to practise 
religious observances? Is it not often mere habit, 
or an uneasy sense of duty? Our responsiveness 
to the spirit of Christ is the only certain sign that 
Christ is " formed within us." 

The Church is to express also the spirit of 
Christ toward man. It is his face to show his 
smile of kindliness, or his look of tender love, or 
his frown of holy indignation against impudent 
wrong. It is his eyes to weep tears of pity over 
human sorrow, his lips to breathe words of com- 



174 The Religion of Hope. 

fort and compassion, his ears to hear the com^ 
plaints of the stricken, his heart to bear the 
burdens of the oppressed. It is to express in its 
manner the gentleness and meekness of Christ, his 
charity toward the fallen, his sympathy with all 
who suffer, his patience with all who are ignorant 
and wayward. The fallen and the outcast are to 
find in its look the compassion and gracious wel- 
come of Christ. " The woman that was a sinner" 
is to hear from its lips mercy and not judgment. 
Little children are to find its arms outstretched 
to receive them. Whatever is evil and harsh is 
to have no place in its speech or manner. It has 
nothing to do with pride or arrogance ; nothing to 
(Jo with cold neglect or cruel scorn. To it must 
not belong enmity or envy or selfishness in any 
form. In so far as it shows any of these traits or 
tempers it belies its informing soul ; it betrays 
Christ when it perverts in expression the spirit 
which is proper to him. Think of the frightful 
and colossal misrepresentation of Christ of which 
that church is guilty, in which there is contention, 
or coldness, or worldliness, or uncharitableness, or 
pride, or envy, or greed for possession and place 
and power, or irreverence, or indifference to human 
need, or forgetfulness of human sorrow, or unfor- 
givingness to offenders, or devotion to luxury and 
selfish ease ! 

I wonder if we think of this as much as we 
should. The apostle exhorts the Christians to 



The Churchy the Body of Christ, 175 

whom he writes to " put on Christ," that is to 
show fairly the Christ who by their profession is 
in them. We think much of what Christ is to us 
as a Saviour from the penalty of sin, and some- 
what of what he is to us as Lord commanding us 
to service, but what are we to Christ? How are 
we expressing him? What sort of translation of 
his speech are we making to the world? We are 
members of the body of Christ, not simply for our 
own safety and comfort, but for his use as the 
means of his continuous self-manifestation to 
humanity. The world is to see Christ in us, if it 
is to see him at all. 

2. In the second place, the Church, as the body 
of Christ, that is, his instrument and means of ex- 
pression, is to utter his message — the message of 
God through the Christ to the world. It is his 
voice, putting into articulate speech his thoughts — 
his conception of the infinite and eternal Father, 
his word of truth for the enlightenment and com- 
fort and salvation of men. As the organ of Christ, 
the Church must express truly, not personal opin- 
ion, not predilections and prejudices determined 
by association, habit and inheritance, and not mere 
dogmas, but the very mind of Christ. To preach 
the gospel is not merely to repeat what has been 
said in the past. The living Christ in his living 
body freshly utters his living message to the minds 
and hearts of men. That message is not a mere 
reminiscence or record of something past, but a 



176 The Religion of Hope, 

testimony of the present love and mercy of God, 
the present grace of salvation, the present power 
of the cross, the present inspiration of the Holy 
Ghost, and the present experience of the resurrec- 
tion and the eternal life. Only as Christ lives in 
us are we fit or able really to give his message. 
All our preachings and pubHshings, our profes- 
sings and testifyings, are meaningless and power- 
less unless the indwelling Christ speak in us and 
through us. The word which is " in demonstra- 
tion of the Spirit and of power " is *' the word that 
was in the beginning with God," and is henceforth 
and forever incarnate in human personality. 

The consciousness of this truth is what gives the 
Church power when it speaks. It does not put it- 
self in the place of Christ, substituting a tradition 
or an institution for the living personality, but 
freely yields itself to Christ that he may have ever 
fresh utterance through it as his living body. 

3, In the third place, the Church as the body of 
Christ is to do the work of Christ, — to carry on the 
divine redemptive and reparative activity within 
and upon the hearts, minds, bodies, and estates of 
men. 

This is the point upon which I would lay special 
emphasis to-day, for it needs emphasis. The Church, 
with some clearness, has recognized its mission and 
obligation to utter the message of Christ. Of this 
every missionary organization is a witness. To 
some degree the Church has recognized its duty 



The Church, the Body of Christ. 177 

to express the spirit of Christ in its life. But it 
has not yet, at all fully, recognized its function as 
the executor of Christ's will in carrying on his 
work. The larger part of the Church's endeavor 
has been to convince men of the truth of the 
Gospel, — to make them hear and persuade them 
to believe the Christian message, — to convert indi- 
vidual men from unbelief to faith, and from sin to 
righteousness ; and in doing this work it has often 
been more anxious to commend its own claims and 
authority than purely to propagate truth. But, for 
the most part, it has stopped there. Like a re- 
cruiting officer it has sought to enlist men, com- 
pany after company and regiment after regiment, 
but it has not in any large sense led them to battle. 
It has not attacked the intrenched evils of vice and 
poverty and ignorance and selfishness with any 
such breadth of plan and practicalness of method 
as it should, as, indeed, it must attain if it is even 
fitly to express the indwelling Christ, to say noth- 
ing of possessing the world for him. 

I am not unmindful of the vast and multifarious 
charities of the Church in all ages since its begin- 
ning; nor would I in the least depreciate the very 
great moral influence of the Church, even in the 
darkest hours of its long experience ; but what I 
would do is sharply to call your minds to the 
defectiveness both of the method of the Church and 
of the idea of its mission which has prevailed in it 
through most of its history. That defectiveness 



178 The Religion of Hope. 

grows more apparent as society develops and new 
needs clamor for ministry. Recall the story of 
Christ's actual life among men as that story is told 
in the Gospels. What a strenuous life, and how 
full of action it was! Jesus talked much; the 
records, full as they are of his speech, give us but 
fragments ; but he labored more. Take the Gospel 
of Mark : from beginning to end it witnesses to a 
steady march of activity. Mark's Gospel is the 
biography of the toiling Christ. In it we see the 
Master incessantly engaged in works of mercy, — 
healing the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting 
the sad, refreshing the weary, and teaching the 
ignorant. 

Is it not significant that Jesus was so busy in 
daily, practical philanthropy? He seems to have 
laid fully as much stress on works of mercy as 
he did on words of truth. In his reply to John's in- 
quiry : "Art thou the Coming One?" he bade the 
Baptist's messengers " go and tell John what things 
ye have seen and heard." The Messiah's creden- 
tials are quite as much in his works as in his words; 
and in his works not as miracles merely, but as 
manifestations of divine pity and benevolence. His 
exhortations to his disciples are continually on this 
line — of engagement in the works which are char- 
acteristic of the gospel of good-will. One of his 
great promises is, *' He that believeth in me the 
works that I do shall he do also; and greater 
works than these shall he do." He was speaking, 



The Churchy the Body of Christ. 179 

not of thaumaturgic display, but of blessed achieve- 
ments in ministry to human need. When he sent 
forth the seventy on an evangelizing tour he gave 
them power to heal the sick and cast out demons ; 
and his charge was, *' Freely ye have received, 
freely give." They were not merely to preach a 
gospel; they were not merely to promise men a 
heaven by and by. They were to preach a gos- 
pel, broader and sweeter than men had dared to 
hope for; but they were also to attack directly the 
palpable evils of human sickness and pain and 
hunger and blindness and poverty and crime. 

Now the Church, as the body of Christ, is cer- 
tainly commissioned to do the works of Christ. 
That is what it is for. " The word " and *' the 
works " are not to be separated. " The word " 
needs the illustration and enforcement of '' the 
works." And yet, even we who live in this enlight- 
ened time have recollections of a temper in the 
Church that was suspicious of philanthropy. Phil- 
anthropic enterprises were looked at askance, al- 
most as if they were devices of Satan to beguile 
men from the security of faith into the deadly peril 
of trust in works. Under the influence of a mistaken 
conception of faith the Church, especially the Pro- 
testant Church, narrowed its work until the Chris- 
tian spirit which is broader than any church sought 
and found instruments for its purpose outside of all 
ecclesiastical organizations. Why has a multitude 
of agencies — societies, guilds, associations, sal- 



1 80 The Religio?i of Hope. 

vation armies, — sprung up to do philanthropic 
work? Because, for a time, the Church failed to 
recognize that it is itself, in the design of Christ, 
the great philanthropic society of the world. How 
narrow the sphere of the Church still is in the 
thought of many people ! It must not meddle 
with politics, though cities fester with pohtical cor- 
ruption. It must not engage in " secular" matters. 
Its work, it is said, is " spiritual," and the word, 
*' spiritual," has been dessicated and bleached until 
it is a poor thin ghost of religiosity, having no 
practical meaning. 

No ; if Christ healed the sick, the Church may, 
and must, heal the sick. If Christ cast out demons, 
the Church must cast out the demons of vice and 
greed and crime-breeding want. If Christ fed the 
hungry, the Church must feed the hungry of body 
and mind and soul. The great question for the 
Church to grapple with to-day is a question not as 
to the revision of its creeds, but as to the revision 
of its hfe. There is need that the best thought be 
engaged in the endeavor to correct the mistaken 
and still too prevalent idea of the Church on this 
matter of its relation to the actual life of men and 
society to-day, and in the endeavor to adjust the 
machinery and force of the Church to the work 
which as the body of Christ it must do, or itself 
become a corpse, offensive to men and inviting 
burial. 

The Church must no longer stand apart from the 



The Church, the Body of Christ. i8i 

great currents of human activity and the great 
spheres of daily human interest. It must no 
longer dwell in a cloister or a prayer meeting. It 
must strip for action. It must gird itself and bend 
to wash weary disciples' feet. It must have train- 
ing schools, and orphans' homes, and hospitals, and 
medical dispensaries, and classes for the study of 
economics in the light of the New Testament, and 
reading-rooms, and play-rooms, and all means for 
making life healthy and pure and skilful and strong 
and joyous. The recent dedication of a gymnasium 
in a Christian schooP in the city of Springfield, as 
the first of its prospective buildings, is full of in- 
spiring significance. The Church must have all 
these and many more facilities and instruments for its 
work. It needs the prayer-meeting and the services 
for worship and meditation. To these it must come 
to get head of power, then it must turn the power on 
in such ways and through such agencies that 
society shall be moved and changed and shaped 
into the visible and growing kingdom of God. It 
must widen its material ministry that its spiritual 
ministry may be wider and more efficacious. 

But there are still some, perhaps, who will ask: 
Will not this secularize the Church? Did it secu- 
larize Christ to go into the streets and into the 
homes of men — to pour out his power in ministries 
of health to the paralytic and the blind? Did it 
secularize him to furnish wine for a wedding-feast 
1 The Y. M. C. A. Training School. 



1 82 The Religion of Hope. 

and bread for a hungry multitude? No; it will 
not secularize the Church to pour out its energies 
in daily ministries to ignorant, unskilful, needy, and 
suffering humanity; but it will spiritualize the 
home, and consecrate business, and sanctify social 
life ; and it will react on the Church to make it 
more like Christ than it ever has been. The body 
of the Lord should be strong and beautiful and 
rich with manifold skill. This is the mandate of 
God to the Church to-day to "■ make its calling and 
election sure." Heeding this mandate the Church 
will grow in that beneficent power which it was 
meant to possess and wield amidst the life of the 
world. It will draw men to it as by a celestial 
gravitation ; and its divine message, reinforced by its 
divine works, will grow clearer, sweeter, more 
eloquent, and more convincing. Its voice will no 
longer be, what too often it is now, like a solitary cry 
from the house-top — a mere Muezzin-voice calling 
to prayer the throngs that do not heed. It will no 
more be a rival institution unsuccessfully com- 
peting with humanitarian organizations and lecture- 
bureaus, alternately jealous of the State and fawning 
upon it for unrighteous favors ; but it will be 
" the light of the world," guiding men in all in- 
dustries and studies and recreations, and lead- 
ing them in the pathway of faith and love and 
holiness, making its promise of heaven in the life 
that is to come potent with the working of a 
heavenly spirit in the Hfe that now is. It will be 



The Churchy the Body of Christ. 183 

*' the salt of the earth," cleansing its foulness, stay- 
ing its corruption, and healing its disease. It will 
be the poor man's friend, the weak man's support, 
the oppressed man's helper, the rich man's monitor 
and the strong man's guide. It will be the savior 
of society, dispelling strife from its industries and 
fraud from its commerce, subduing its greed for 
gold, purifying its politics, banishing its misery, 
developing its virtues, and multiplying its joys. 
Not less clearly and strongly, but more clearly and 
strongly, it will preach its saving gospel of a 
crucified and risen Lord and Redeemer of men; 
and it will make the world, what God means it shall 
be, the perfected kingdom of his glorious Son. 



X. 

THE INCREASE FROM GOD. 



We feel Him, nor by painful reason know ! 

The everlasting minute of creation 

Is felt there ; Now it is, as it was Then ; 

All changes at His instantaneous will, 

Not by the operation of a law 

Whose maker is elsewhere at other work ! 

His hand is still engaged upon His world — 

Man's praise can forward it, Man's prayers suspend ; 

For is not God all-mighty ? — to recast 

The world, erase old things and make them new, 

What costs it Him? 

Is not God now i' the world His power first made ? 

Is not His love at issue still with sin. 

Visibly when a wrong is done on earth ? 

Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around ? 

Robert Browning. 



X. 

THE INCREASE FROM GOD. 



I planted, ApoUos watered, but God gave the increase. 
Cor. iii. 6. 



'' I ^HE Church in Corinth was full of factions. 
-*■ Instead of thinking of Christ, and following 
Christ, and doing Christ's work for men, these 
Corinthian Christians were looking to Christ's 
servants who in various ways or at various times 
had been their leaders. The spirit of partisanship 
was rife. Some said : " We follow Paul." Others 
said : '' We follow Apollos." Still others said : 
" We take Peter for our leader." The result was 
that the Church was not only divided and weakened 
in its force for good, but it had become even 
obstructive of true Christian endeavor. Both the 
efficiency and the charm of the Church were well- 
nigh lost. Paul's words are full of reproof as well 
as of instruction. He tells those Corinthians that 
they are carnal and not spiritual. The spirit which 
they show is not the spirit of a truly Christian 
Church. Their force, instead of being directed 
faithfully and persistently to the ends which Christ 
is seeking through them, is turned into a self- 



1 88 The Religion of Hope, 

divisive and self-destructive energy. They have 
violated their allegiance. Who is Paul? Who is 
ApoUos? Who is Cephas? These men are but 
ministers, that is, servants, of Jesus Christ. Christ, 
not this or that apostle, is the head of the Church. 
To Christ the Church owes undivided loyalty; in 
Christ alone it finds its true unity as well as its 
ground of being. 

What a picture that Corinthian Church presents ! 
How many times since Paul's day has the Church 
presented a similiar spectacle, — partisanship spoil- 
ing unity, jealousy outraging love, and contention 
destroying spirituality. Is there any sight more 
shocking and revolting than a church of Christ in 
which love has grown cold, and selfishness has 
soured the milk of human kindness into the acid 
of rancorous hate, and religious life has ebbed 
away leaving only a repulsive simulacrum of 
doctrinal "orthodoxy"? 

But we will not dwell on the offensive picture. 
With reproof the apostle mingles instruction. That 
instruction is pertinent to the condition and needs 
of the Church to-day, if the rebuke is not. 

The function of the Church, in large outline, is 
to do the works of Christ and to pubhsh the mes- 
sage of Christ. This involves a work of internal 
conservation and development — of training and 
unfolding itself in all Christian knowledge and 
grace and efficiency. Its great mission to men, as 
the depositary of the Gospel, demands all its 



The Increase from God. 189 

resources of thought, feeling, possessions, and skill 
in labor. Upon the Church is laid the work of sav- 
ing the world through the gospel of Christ. Now, 
even if the Church were never invaded by factious- 
ness, nor fettered by ignorance, nor weighted down 
by sloth, still how greatly disproportionate to its 
resources and strength is the work that it is set to 
do; that is, when we look at the Church alone. 
But we are taught by Jesus Christ, we are taught 
by the Apostle Paul, and we are taught by experi- 
ence, not to look at the Church alone. The work 
of saving humanity and bringing it on toward its 
high spiritual destiny is God's work. He is not 
limited by our organizations, nor dependent on 
our resources. Many times the Church falls to 
looking to its organization, or to some one of its 
specially capable servants, as the chief means, if not 
the only means, for establishing the divine kingdom 
in the world. In the Corinthian Church some said : 
Paul is the great man; everything depends on him. 
Others said : No; ApoUos is more eloquent; he is 
the essential power. Others pinned their faith and 
their partisan devotion to some one else. With 
words that smite like cords, Paul declares the truth 
that must confound and shame the shallow-minded 
sectaries. "What then is ApoUos? and what is 
Paul? Ministers — servants — through whom ye 
believed ; and each as the Lord gave to him. I 
planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the in- 
crease. So then neither is he that planteth any- 



1 90 The Religion of Hope. 

thing, neither he that watereth; but God that 
giveth the increase." 

Here, then, is the truth that the Church must 
ever remember, that Christians need to ponder 
upon until its meaning has got into their hearts 
and suffused all their thinking and inspired and 
energized all their action : 

I. All true power is of God. 

This is true in the realm of the natural life. 
That was a profound saying of St. Paul's, beyond 
which none of our philosophies have got : " In Him 
we live and move and have our being." Every- 
where are the divine life and the divine energy. 
The world is the effluence of God's thought and 
the objectification of his will. The globe thrills 
with vitality because he pervades all things. The 
springing green of the meadow, the purpling clusters 
of the vineyard, the waving gold of the harvest, 
and all the multiform fruitage of field and forest 
are the product of the divine energy. We live and- 
walk and think, the blood leaps in our arteries and 
our nerves tingle with sensation, because God is. 
All life is a divine product and manifestation. The 
true doctrine of Creation is a statement of the 
divine immanence as well as of the divine activity. 
All human endeavor has its sphere within and not 
outside of the sphere where God works, for he 
works everywhere. 

All result of man's labor is a divine product. 
The farmer tills his fields and sows the seed : but 



The Increase from God. 191 

God in the sunshine and the rain and the fecund 
earth gives the harvest. Nothing, not even the 
commonest task, is done apart from Him. 

" The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome 
Wrought in a sad sincerity ; 
Himself from God he could not free." 

The poet, with eyes that see, helps us to see the 
inseparableness of God from the lofty achievements 
of genius ; but the hand that rounds an axe-helve, 
or shapes the keel of a ship, is also dependent on 
that Deity from whom no man can free himself in 
time or eternity. 

We fancy that God made the world and set it to 
run its course under the regulation of laws which 
he has impressed on it; but there is a subtle infi- 
delity in our fancy. He is in the world, the life of 
its life, the energy of its action, and the force of its 
development. A true insight into nature gives us 

" A sense sublime 

Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and the mind of man : 

A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 

And rolls through all things." 

The higher the plane of being and activity the 
more manifest to thoughtful minds is the all- 



1 92 The Religion of Hope. 

pervading presence and energy of God. Whence 
come the great thoughts of genius? Whence come 
our true thoughts, that dawn like stars out of 
the infinite dark? As God is the begetting force 
that enriches the earth with a new creation every 
springtime, and flings abroad its milHon-fold pro- 
ducts in grass and flowers and bourgeoning trees, 
so God is the underlying and genetic force of all 
our true thinking. He makes the fair products 
of the human mind as certainly as he makes the 
autumnal harvests. He is in all things and he 
accomplishes all real results. By him the world 
subsists, and in him man lives and moves and has 
his being. 

When we rise to the spiritual plane the causal 
relation of the divine life to the human, as the 
ground and spring of all spiritual perception, feel- 
ing and will, becomes even more apparent. Jesus 
said to his disciples : " Without me," that is, apart 
from me, " ye can do nothing." He identified 
himself with God because he was the Son of God, 
and his words are declarative of our necessary 
relation to the divine life. If apart from God we 
can be nothing, surely apart from God we can do 
nothing. 

The world is in ignorance, animalism, and 
sin. The greatest fact of all human experience 
is salvation. It is the deliverance of man into 
the full and free life of the spirit. To us is 
committed a message of grace which is ** the 



The hicrease from God. 193 

power of God unto salvation." What shall we do? 
Manifestly we must faithfully and purely and un- 
ceasingly declare this message. Can we make 
men believe the m.essage? Can we penetrate to 
the dormant spirit, close-folded in the flesh, and 
waken it to life and action? Can we unseal the 
fountains of spiritual aspiration and feeling, and 
set free their healing streams? In our best minis- 
try to the world we are but instruments ; we are 
but more or less serviceable conductors. The life 
is from God. He who *' turneth the hearts of 
kings, as the rivulets of water are turned " by the 
gardener when he irrigates his field, turns every 
heart that ever is turned to himself. 

The doctrine of efficacious grace so tena- 
ciously held by the old Calvinists has in it a 
core of vital truth. They were wrong in the nar- 
rowness of their theory of grace, and in their pre- 
sumptuous attempt to prescribe the methods and 
limit the scope of the divine activity. But in 
this they were right: it is God who begets man 
into the life of the spirit. Back of all our instru- 
ments and organizations, our exhortations and 
preachings, our pleadings and prayers, is the irre- 
sistible divine attraction. God in Christ, God the 
Spirit of all grace and truth, God the Father and 
Sovereign of men, is the Saviour of men. 

We look at our schemes and enterprises and ar- 
ray of organizations, and talk about what we have 
done for God; meantime it is God who has done all 

13 



194 T^J^^ Religion of Hope. 

for the world and for us. Without this ever-present, 
ever-prevailing, divine activity, the scope of which 
we have no power to measure, all our plans and 
machinery and endeavor would be but lumber and 
noise. We look upon the slow march of humanity 
up out of dark ignorance, and enslaving supersti- 
tion, and brutal vice, and we say: This that we 
have devised has done it — the eloquence of the 
preacher, the strength of the argument, the per- 
fectness of the machinery ; and, while praising 
God in words, praise the instruments in our 
thought. But God is the real worker. Over 
all our agencies and enterprises is the brooding, 
ever-working Spirit, whose ways often are not our 
ways, and whose work sweeps a circuit the breadth 
of which we have not dreamed. 

Here is the truth which the apostle presses upon 
the Corinthian Church: " It is God who gives the 
increase." Paul may plant wisely and widely; 
Apollos may water carefully and often ; but in 
God only are *' the promise and potency " of 
abounding harvests. 

2. The clear recognition of this truth and hearty, 
trustful acceptance of it, are the essential condi- 
tions of power in the Church to accomplish its 
work of saving men by bringing them into the life 
and joy of the kingdom of God. So essential are 
the recognition and acceptance of this truth, that 
failing here, whatever may be our seeming success 
through many and curious devices, we utterly fail 



The Increase from God. 195 

of accomplishing our true work. God will not fail. 
Men will be saved. The Redemption of the world 
through Christ is the declared purpose of the 
Almighty. But we shall fail, and miss our own 
blessed share in the great enterprise. Our de- 
pendence must not be on any material or artificial 
means. Sometimes Christian men have thought, 
or have seemed to think, that the work of a 
church could be fully accomplished by securing 
a fine location and a beautiful building and ex- 
quisite music and eloquent or scholarly preach- 
ing; and in this delusion they have supplied these 
conditions and then folded their arms in compla- 
cent expectancy. To such the stern voice of 
experience declares, that, unless the false idea and 
the fatuous hope are abandoned they will perish 
in disappointment, if not, at last, in self contempt. 

The power that makes a radiant, far-shining 
splendor on the top of yonder lamp-post is not in 
the crystal globe that surrounds the carbon pen- 
cils, nor in the carbons, nor in the insulated wires, 
nor in the whirring dynamo, nor in the panting 
eno:ine ; back of all these correlated pieces of 
mechanism is the cosmic force which streams forth 
in the sunshine, the force by which ages ago the 
sunbeams were locked up in the forming coal- 
strata, until at last they are set free in our streets 
to make plain the path of the belated traveller. 
The power that makes luminiferous and effective 
the Church of Christ is not its elaborate and 



196 The Religion of Hope. 

nicely articulated machinery of pastor and officers 
and committees and meetings, but the divine 
Spirit who works in all and through all to accom- 
plish divine ends. 

But does this truth in any slightest degree obvi- 
ate the need of instruments and organizations and 
individual and united labor? Must not Paul still 
plant, and ApoUos still water? The figure sug- 
gested by the apostle is singularly fit. It is God 
who gives the harvest, — God in nature, God in 
the soil, and the rain, and the sunshine, and the 
shade; but the farmer must plough and sow and 
watch and weed; he must guard the tender 
growth, and, when the harvest hour strikes, put 
in the sickle and reap. This is man's share in 
the complete divine process. And God works in 
the farmer too, giving him life and prudence and 
skill of mind to interpret and use nature. By his 
faith in nature, that is, in God, the farmer works. 
Because a force above him makes sure the harvest, 
he sows in hope and reaps in gladness of heart. 
I say the apostle's figure is most fit. So must we, 
in the realm of the spirit, cultivate and plant and 
guard and reap. So shall we do if there be in us 
true faith in God. 

For the truth that we have been contemplating 
is (i) a source of inspiration to endeavor. The 
greatness of our work, looked at, as we so often 
look at it, from a low plane, would paralyze us 
with discouragement. Think for a moment, if you 



The Increase from God. 197 

can, of a man who, having no knowledge of 
nature's processes and no faith in the reproductive 
relation of seed to soil and sun and shower, is told 
to produce twenty bushels of wheat from the one 
bushel that is set before him. What marvel could 
be greater to him than that which he is asked to 
perform ? 

When we get some true idea of what it is to 
save men from sin, we at once see how futile is our 
endeavor unless we believe in the ever present and 
ever efficient grace and power of God. But, 
having a true and strong faith, we overlook all 
diiticulties. The hardness of the task disappears. 
It is God's work; we are but instruments, servants 
of a divine purpose. With faith comes a great 
inspiration. We know that God is not mocked. 
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
The farmer springs to his work with joy, knowing 
that the earth waits but to respond to his toil with 
rich reward of golden harvests. So we, if our 
hearts are filled with the great thought of God's 
power and purpose to redeem the world, spring to 
our work with joyful and patient assurance, know- 
ing that '* his word shall not return unto him 
void." 

(2) There is great comfort, too, in this truth. 
When the days are dark and the obstructions are 
mountainous, then the resources of the soul in God 
more deeply disclose themselves. Experience lets 
us into the meaning of St. Paul's words : " When I 



198 The Religio7t of Hope. 

am weak, then am I strong ; " " I can do all things 
through him who strengtheneth me." The con- 
viction that we are engaged in a divine enterprise 
gives us the heart to work on when work seems 
fruitless. God's work will be done. The harvest 
is his, and in his time he will produce it in all its 
fulness and all its beauty. No toil for his ends is 
vain. No seeding is lost. No right effort utterly 
fails. 

(3) There is power in this truth. Confidence 
makes man invincible. The confidence which a 
profound belief in God imparts is the most uncon- 
querable thing in this world. If you believe that 
God is the Lover and Saviour of men, and you 
have any true conception of him, defeat to-day is 
no token to you of defeat to-morrow; failure 
to-day contains no omen of failure at last. Defeat 
cannot be final. Failure cannot continue. The 
nature of God alone is an inviolable guarantee 
of the triumph of good and the salvation of the 
world. The deep sense of God as the absolutely 
efficient force in the redemption of man perpet- 
ually feeds in our hearts the springs of motive 
as well as of hope. We are workers together with 
God ; nay, it is God who, of his own good pleasure, 
works in us both to will and to do. 

Instead, then, of a true faith making our en- 
deavor seem unnecessary, it stimulates us to 
greater endeavor and lifts us to a higher power 
of sustained effort to enlighten and move and save 



The Increase from God. 199 

our fellow-men. The divine method and activity in- 
clude all our instruments, all our organizations, and 
all our aspirations and prayers and efforts. God 
makes our planting and our watering vital parts of 
his great enterprise. In the productive processes 
of nature, as in the germination and growth of 
plants,' every zephyr and rain-drop and sunbeam 
and starbeam has its place of efficient relation to 
the full result. So in the realm of the spirit, the 
multifold ministries of God to man through man, 
— the words that we may speak, the deeds that we 
may do, the prayers that we may breathe, the influ- 
ences that we may wield, — all have an efficient 
relation to the great end which, after all, is wholly 
divine. 

The truth that " God giveth the increase," 
whosoever may do the planting and watering, 
instead of being an excuse for our sloth and 
unfaithfulness, is a supreme reason why we should 
pour our energies without stint into the work of 
bringing men into the knowledge of truth and into 
the life of the spirit. It is a great stimulus to 
endeavor. It is a great inspiration to sacrifice for 
the end in view. It is a measureless reinforcement 
of power to live and to work along the line of God's 
redemptive purpose. A wise bishop once said : 
" I tell my clergy to believe as if God did every- 
thing and nothing depended on them, and to work 
as if everything depended on them." We must 
do our work or God will give us no increase. He 



200 The Religion of Hope. 

will save the world, but not by us. Our service 
measures our capacity to receive divine grace and 
joy. It is at once the fruit of our -faith and the 
attestation of our faith. Intelligent consecration, 
wise diligence, and sweet spirited zeal in doing 
good to our fellow-men and bringing them to 
a knowledge of their Saviour, Jesus Christ, with 
all that this beautiful service involves, are the only 
fit acknowledgment we can make of God's bound- 
less goodness to us and of our grateful trust in him. 
It is only the '* living sacrifice " that is a " reason- 
able service," and this is a service of unwearying 
faith and unconquerable hope. 

" The veil of Time a moment falls 

From off the Eternal's face : 
Recede the old horizon walls 

To give fresh breathing-space : 
And all who lift their eyes may learn 

It is our Father's will, 
This world to him shall freely turn 

A world of freedom still." 



XI. 

FORSAKING ALL FOR CHRIST. 



Religion 's all or nothing : it 's no mere smile 
O' contentment, sigh of aspiration, sir — 
No quality o' the finelier-tempered clay- 
Like its whiteness or its lightness ; rather stuff 
O' the very stuff, life of life and self of self. 

Robert Browning. 



XI. 

FORSAKING ALL FOR CHRIST. 

Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he 
cannot be my disciple. — Luke xiv. 33. 

WHAT did Jesus mean by this saying? We 
who have avowed ourselves, or secretly 
consider ourselves, Christians are in the habit of 
calling him Teacher and Lord. It is a fair ques- 
tion whether even we have clearly recognized and 
radically accepted a tithe of all that is involved in 
the supreme Teachership and Lordship which, in 
words at least, we so promptly ascribe to him. It 
is a startling experience, — to be brought suddenly 
face to face with some of Christ's sayings. I 
wonder how many of us are willing to pull our- 
selves up with a strong hand and compel our 
minds to consider honestly and unflinchingly the 
words of our Teacher until we see exactly what he 
taught and what his teaching involves with respect, 
not only to our habitual conduct, but also to our 
ruling motives and dispositions and purposes. 

The world is busy in getting and using for pur- 
poses of multiform gratification the things to 
which its needs or its tastes give value, and we 



204 ^^^ Religio7i of Hope. 

are part of the world. Whatever may have been 
the dominant idea of the Christian in the past, 
to-day and here the average Christian is both in 
the world and of the world. That is, the solidarity 
of society is stronger than the theological division 
of men into *' saints " and ** sinners." If love of 
art, devotion to politics, interest in inventions, and 
eager pursuit of economic prosperity are marks 
of *' worldliness," then the church is worldly, and 
external differences between Christian and non- 
Christian, or rather, between church member and 
non-church member, are often hard to find. 

That there are differences, very wide and deep, 
between the really Christian man and the really 
un-Christian man, there can be no doubt; but the 
superficial marks of difference between the nomi- 
nally Christian and the nominally un-Christian man 
often are not discernible to the ordinary eye. 
Christians are no longer a " peculiar people." 

This fact I cannot now consider at length; 
though I must say that, if clearly understood, it is 
not necessarily an evidence of retrogression. No 
one who understands the real character and ten- 
dencies of modern society will hazard the opinion 
that it is degenerating, that social conditions are 
less favorable to virtue now than they were in the 
past, or that essential Christianity has lost anything 
of its virility and force. But I mention the fact 
in order to call your attention sharply to this 
thought: that we who are avowed disciples of 



Forsaking All for Christ. 205 

Jesus Christ are bound, now as never before, to 
know just what Jesus Christ teaches, and now as 
never before are bound to look our own Hfe 
squarely in the face under the light of what Jesus 
Christ teaches. The consciousness that we are in 
the world, and, in a very large sense of the world, 
gives a fresh poignancy to such sayings of Jesus 
as this : " Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh 
not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." 

Before we take up the study of these words in 
their relation to our daily life, let us pause for a 
moment to consider two preliminary thoughts, 
(i) The first is the importance of construing par- 
ticular sayings of Jesus in the light of his entire 
teaching. Many moral precepts, like many state- 
ments of truth, are conditional. Each is, to some 
extent, dependent on other precepts. Take, for 
example, the commandment which has a primary 
place in Christian teaching : " Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind." This must be inter- 
preted by those revelations of God which disclose 
his essential lovableness. No command could 
compel or justify love of a moral monster. It is 
the exhibition of the divine nature which Jesus 
gives us that makes the command so authoritative. 
The command is not simply an edict: it is an 
appeal to what is highest in us, because God is 
set forth in his Son as the One absolutely good. 
The command, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 



2o6 The Religion of Hope, 

thyself," also must be interpreted by those reve- 
lations of the ideal human nature which Jesus 
makes, and which give us the standard of a true 
self-love, and therefore the standard of a true 
love for our neighbor. 

If, now, these simplest, most elementary state- 
ments of moral duty need the interpretative light 
of other statements, much more do many of Jesus' 
sayings need the interpretative light that shines 
in the general drift and purport of his whole 
teaching. Take this, for example: '* Except ye 
eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his 
blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that 
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eter- 
nal life," in which is expressed, if we take these 
words literally, the rankest religious materialism. 
But we remember that Jesus said : '' The words 
that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are 
life." Therefore we must go beneath the sur- 
face and behind the form and beyond the letter, 
or we shall not only fail to understand the real 
meaning of our teacher, but we shall even get a 
contradictory and false, or wholly absurd, mean- 
ing. If we do not use a large good sense in our 
study of Jesus' words, we must make him sometimes 
an impracticable enthusiast, sometimes a mystical 
ascetic, and sometimes a radical and destructive 
revolutionist. 

(2) In the second place, we must read the say- 
ings of Jesus in the light of this truth : that the im- 



Forsaking All for Christ. 207 

mediate, continuous, and imperative reference of 
these sayings is to life. They are not subjects for 
curious speculation, nor appeals to blind credulity. 
They enounce principles of righteousness and 
generate pure motives; they quicken the reason, 
sensitize the conscience, stir the feelings, and rouse 
and guide the will by the power of truth. Through 
Jesus' words we feel the vital and vivifying breath 
of the Holy Spirit; by them we are instantly urged 
on from moral perception to moral action ; they 
bear immediately on all our doing; they are 
directly related to our daily purposes, disposi- 
tions, and deeds, and attain their final results in 
our characters. In every saying there is some 
suggestion of duty as well as some pulse of 
inspiration. 

The strange doctrine is still sometimes advanced 
that Jesus did not give the Sermon on the Mount 
as a law of daily conduct, but rather as the ex- 
pression of an unattainable ideal, the function of 
which is to drive men to despair, and thus make 
them willing to trust Jesus to do everything for 
them in their stead. Such a doctrine makes Jesus 
a trickster with words, and takes the heart of sin- 
cerity out of the revelation which is mediated by 
him. It is not only an erroneous doctrine: it is 
even an immoral doctrine ; and it lies very close 
to the root of the worst errors in dogmatic the- 
ology. The sayings of Jesus are designed to 
shape human conduct and character. They ap- 



208 The Religion of Hope. 

peal to faith, but it is a faith '' that works by love " 
and conforms to fundamental principles of reason 
and morality. The conclusion of the Sermon on 
the Mount is tremendously suggestive of what 
must be the outcome of Christ's teaching: ''Every 
one therefore who heareth these words of mine, 
and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, 
who built his house upon the rock. . . . And every 
one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth 
them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who 
built his house upon the sand." 

But while we have no right to push the teaching 
of Jesus aside as impracticable, and seek refuge in 
the soft indolence of a trust which is soporific to 
conscience and stultifying to reason ; on the other 
hand we are not to lower his teaching to the level 
of our habit or of an easy attainability. We must 
understand his sayings in their harmony with his 
own perfect personality. Weakness, cowardliness, 
and selfishness in us make some of his teachings 
impracticable. But while in his heart there is 
infinite patience with men, in his doctrine there 
is no lowering the standard of excellence toward 
which we are to aspire and strive ; there is no 
dropping the ideal to the level of our little thought 
and low attainment. Listen to his words, — words 
that smite like whips, that pierce like arrows, that 
shock like electricity, — ''Why call ye me Lord, 
Lord, and do not the things which I say? " 

How greatly important it is, then, that we find 



Forsaking All for Christ. 209 

out just what Jesus did say, and just what are his 
instructions to us and his requirements of us in 
this day ! Too often we treat his words as a charm 
or a fetish, instead of what they were meant to be, 
— a hght for our feet and a lamp for our paths. 

Take, now, this saying: "Whosoever he be of 
you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot 
be my disciple." The word translated ** forsake " 
is rendered in the American revision by ''re- 
nounce," and means, literally, '* to separate one's 
self from." If we follow Count Tolsto'i's method 
of interpretation and understand this saying in a 
badly literal way, then we must admit that there 
is very little real discipleship even among those 
who profess to follow Jesus. We must admit, too, 
that most of us are either profoundly mistaken in 
our conceptions of the Christian hfe, or utterly 
recreant. We have no right to qualify the text 
simply to save ourselves. But let us see whether 
Jesus does not himself both qualify and explain 
this " hard saying " in such a way as to reveal at 
once its deep spirituality of thought and its entire, 
though not easy, practicability. 

W^e will approach the text first negatively. From 
what we know of Jesus' teaching as a whole we are 
sure that here he does not mean, (i) That it is the 
duty of every man who would follow him to aban- 
don all material possessions. Situations are con- 
ceivable in which it would be one's supreme duty to 
surrender utterly, not only possessions, but even life 

14 



2IO The Religion of Hope. 

itself, for the sake of Christ, or that for which Christ 
stands. But in general this manifestly is not a 
duty. To abandon all hold upon material pos- 
sessions, and therefore all use of them, would be 
to put one's self out of relation to the economic 
and social prosperity of men. It would be to 
rupture important social ties, and to shear one's 
self of a great part of his power to serve his fellow- 
men. The real service of man is the true service 
of God. The field of service is not confined to 
what we call our spiritual relations. At every 
point where life touches life, whatever the interest 
may be, — economic, political, social, or religious, 
— there is the opportunity for service; there love 
may have free play ; there we may worship by un- 
selfish and wise deeds the divinity revealed in man. 
Whatever is done to promote the real good of men, 
though it be building a factory, or laying a rail- 
road, or opening a mine, or improving the sanitary 
condition of a crowded city ward, or founding an 
industrial school, or endowing a library, or any 
other of the numerous beneficent enterprises that 
require money and labor and economic skill, is as 
much a part of service to God as praying and 
singing hymns and planting missions. Christianity 
sanctifies wealth to the highest and widest uses. It 
sanctifies also the righteous production of wealth. 
But the production of wealth implies society and 
co-operation and the thousand-fold relations and 
activities of industrial life. Jesus does not mean, 



Forsaking All for Christ. 211 

then, that simple abandonment of all material pos- 
sessions is a necessary condition of discipleship 
to him. 

A wide and careful study of Jesus' teaching 
makes it plain also that the text does not mean (2) 
That we should sever all ties of home and society, 
and abandon kinsfolk and friends as well as posses- 
sions. For to do this would be to repudiate or 
evade the broadest and weightiest obligations 
which Jesus himself declared and emphasized. 
The hermit or the celibate is not the true type of 
the Christian. God hath set the solitary in fami- 
lies. The family, not the individual, is the unit of 
society, and society is the sphere of the individ- 
ual's true development. No man liveth to himself 
alone. No man can live to himself alone and re- 
main in the true sense a man. Humanity is not 
an aggregation, but an organism. We are necessary 
to each other. Religion, as Christ reveals and ex- 
emplifies it, does not isolate, it consolidates, men. 
It makes a true society possible. Love is the ulti- 
mate, supreme, divine law of the world. But love 
imphes relation, communion, mutual action and 
mutual service. Any view of Christianity which 
draws us apart from our neighbors is a false view. 
The Pharisee excluded the common people ; Jesus 
haunted the streets and homes where thronged and 
dwelt the " publicans and sinners." A true percep- 
tion and acceptance of Christ's spirit strengthens 
and ennobles all human relations. The apocalyptic 



2 1 2 The Religion of Hope. 

figure of heaven is a great city, whose length and 
breadth and height are equal, — the symbol of com- 
pleteness. The city is the highest type and ex- 
pression of social organization. The isolation of 
savagery disappears as the spirit of Christian civ- 
ilization appears, and Tshmaelites become brothers 
and co-workers. Society is our field, our opportu- 
nity, the fulfilment of our own life, the embodiment 
as well as the revelation of the kingdom of God. 

Just what, then, did Jesus mean when he said, 
"Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all 
that he hath, he cannot be my disciple"? When 
he spoke these words he was addressing the multi- 
tude. The Evangelist says : ** Now there went 
with him great multitudes; and he turned, and 
said unto them, If any man cometh unto me, and 
hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, 
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his 
own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever 
doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, 
cannot be my disciple." Then follows the brief 
parable about the necessity of counting the cost. 
To this parable the text is in the form of a logical 
summing up and conclusion : " So therefore who- 
soever he be of you that renounceth not all that he 
hath, he cannot be my disciple." Surely these are 
strong words, and they sound strangely enough on 
the lips of a man who is seeking followers. There 
is truth in the remark of a recent writer on those 
seemingly terrible words: "If any man cometh unto 



Forsaking All for Christ. 213 

me and hateth not his own father, and mother, and 
wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and 
his own hfe also, he cannot be my disciple." *' A 
slow beast needs sharp goads, and Christ stirs and 
startles the conscience by such awakening words, 
not as giving laws of action, but spurs to reflection." 
There is truth, I say, in this, but not the whole 
truth. Jesus uses words that startle and sting, but 
his paradoxes are not self-contradictions. The 
multitudes ran after him with a feverish curiosity, 
and a fickle enthusiasm awakened in great part by 
selfish desire. It seemed an easy thing to be dis- 
ciples of this Nazarene prophet. Perhaps much 
would be gained by following him. Poverty and 
sickness and sharp discontent might be relieved. 
At any rate, here was a new interest, a new possi- 
bility, and the inviting intoxication of a new enthu- 
siasm. But Jesus, patient as he is and divinely 
compassionate, will not let the poor fools of their 
own fancies be deceived into a course which they 
have not fibre and force to maintain. He will not 
let down the ideal of human hfe which he comes to 
disclose. He will not accept less than the com- 
plete redemption of men, though he must wait long 
for it. In efi"ect, he tells the people : *' You know 
not what you seek. You are eager to gain some- 
thing on the low plain of sordid and selfish life. 
Listen : he who would come after me must re- 
nounce all things, even himself, and take a cross." 
Does he not touch here, with sure hand, the 



214 The Religion of Hope. 

secret malady of all human life? Men seek that 
they may have ; Christ would have them seek that 
they may become. " A man's life consists not in 
the abundance of the things which he possesses." 
Life is participation in the thoughts, feehngs, pur- 
poses, possessions, and achievements of the Spirit. 
We are prone to estimate all things, and even to 
look on all relations, from the selfish point of view. 
What Jesus seeks is not to take away possessions, 
or dear objects of our love, but by a change of 
spirit and motive in us to set us in a new and true 
relation to all possessions and all objects of affec- 
tion. It is the same doctrine which he urges in 
the words: '' Seek ye first," that is, as chief, "the 
kingdom of God, and his righteousness ; and all 
these things shall be added unto you." It is the 
doctrine of that self-surrender which issues in one's 
finding his true self: it is losing the soul to save it. 
Here appears the deep reason of Jesus' method 
in putting himself as God's representative, as God's 
Son and man's Saviour, first. This is why he says : 
*' Believe in me," " Follow me," '' He that loveth 
father or mother more than me is not worthy of 
me." He puts himself first because he would have 
God first in the human soul. Man finds his own 
fulfilment and salvation in the love and life of God. 
The change from the Ptolemaic, or geocentric, to 
the Copernican, or heliocentric, system of astron- 
omy is vividly illustrative of what Jesus would do 
for us. As Copernicus put the sun instead of the 



Forsaking All for Christ. 215 

earth in the centre of the planetary system, so Jesus 
would put God instead of self in the centre of the 
moral system. The selfish spirit of the world, and 
of our own hearts, reverses the true order of life. 
Our common phrases are tell-tale. We ask con- 
cerning a man, *' How much is he worth? " mean- 
ing, How much of material wealth has he? There 
are no material measures for the worth of the 
soul; not merely because the soul of man may 
survive the wreck of the material cosmos and enter 
upon a destiny of endless bliss or endless w^oe, but. 
because the soul is the man, the child of God, the 
participant in essential life. Selfishness is the 
bondage and prison of the soul : it creates for us 
false standards, and begets in us mistaken esti- 
mates of values. Selfishness emphasizes having at 
the expense of being. The thing usurps the place 
of the spirit. 

The "■ forsaking all things " which Jesus demands 
is just that surrender of the selfish instinct and the 
selfish point of view which every one makes, and 
must make, and makes gladly, wondering that he 
had not made it long ago, who opens his heart to 
the Son of God as Saviour and Lord, and Inspirer 
and Guide. To such a one possession becomes 
stewardship. Things have for him value only as 
they become instruments of love in its glad, multi- 
form ministry to the world. The surrender of the 
selfish point of view changes everything. It trans- 
forms life. It takes no worth from arts and indus- 



2i6 The Religion of Hope. 

tries, from railroads and mills, from commerce and 
currencies. It gives all these a new value. The 
man has changed, and so they — the things which 
have all their worth by their relation to man — are 
also changed. Forsaking all that he hath, in the 
surrender of his heart and will to God, he ceases 
to follow things, and becomes a follower of God 
manifest in his Son. Jesus' words strike a blow 
at the instinctive and unconscious idolatry of the 
human heart. The words are strange to us: we 
.cannot understand them, because we have not 
sought first the kingdom of God, or have done 
this as yet only in a groping, tentative way. 

What Jesus asks of us is something utterly 
radical. No half measures will satisfy him or 
truly serve us. '* No man can serve two MAS- 
TERS." " Ye cannot serve God and mammon." 
In our sin and selfishness we are ruled by what 
we possess. We are the slaves of the material. 
In the life of the spirit which Jesus opens to us, 
it is as if everything fell away from us. Noth- 
ing has value save as it is new-found in the love 
and thought of God. A new sense of value comes 
to us then. Wealth is precious as the instrument 
of the spirit in attaining worthy ends. All human 
relationships are sweeter, tenderer, and more sacred. 
God, having become first in our lives, with him- 
self gives us all things anew, and then the for- 
saking, the renouncing, that seemed so hard, 
reveals itself as the open doorway for our entrance 
into the measureless liberty of the heavenly life. 



Forsaking All for Christ. 217 

Self-renunciation has been called ** the secret of 
Jesus." It is an open secret for those who will 
hear his voice and open their hearts to the life of 
God in him. 

What Jesus asks of us, then, is not the mere 
abandonment of all material possessions, nor the 
severing of domestic and social ties; but the 
abandonment of that selfishness in possession and 
that self-love in our affections which perpetually 
hinder us from apprehending the true value of 
those and the sacred dearness of these. What he 
seeks is that abandonment of ourselves to God 
which makes it possible for God to give himself 
to us. It is that coming to him by faith which is 
salvation, and the appropriation in time of the life 
which is eternal. 

*' O wealth of life beyond all bound ! 
Eternity each moment given ! 
What plummet may the present sound ? 
Who promises 2i future heaven ? 
Or glad, or grieved, 
Oppresse4, relieved. 
In blackest night, or brightest day, 
Still pours the flood 
Of golden good. 
And more than heartful fills me aye. 

" My wealth is common ; I possess 

No petty province, but the whole ; 
What 's mine alone is mine far less 

Than treasure shared by every soul. 



2 1 8 The Religion of Hope, 

Talk not of store, 

Millions or more, — 
Of values which the purse may hold, — 

But this divine ! 

I own the mine 
Whose grains outweigh a planet's gold. 

*' ' All mine is thine,' the sky-soul saith ; 

' The wealth I am, must thou become ; 
Richer and richer, breath by breath, — 
Immortal gain, immortal room ! ' 
And since all His 
Mine also is, 
Life's gift outruns my fancies far, 
And drowns the dream 
In larger stream, 
As morning drinks the morning star." 



XII. 

A QUESTION OF THE HEART. 



The people listened, with short, indrawn breath, 

And eyes that were too steady set for tears, 

This one man's speech rolled off great loads of fears 

From every heart, as sunlight scattereth 

The clouds ; hard doubts, which had been born of death, 

Shone out as rain-drops shine when rainbow clears 

The air. " O teacher," then I said, " thy years, 

Are they not joy ? Each word that issueth 

From out thy lips, doth it return to bless 

Thy own heart many fold ? " 

With weariness 
Of tone he answered, and almost with scorn, 
" I am, of all, most lone in loneliness ; 
I starve with hunger treading out the corn ; 
I die of travail while their souls are born." 

Helen Hunt Jackson. 



XII. 
A QUESTION OF THE HEART. 

Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he 
asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that the Son of man 
is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; 
and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He saith unto 
them, But whom say ye that I am? — Matt. xvi. 13-15. 

"IT 7HY did Jesus ask this question ? It is a 
^ ^ perfectly natural question for a man to ask, 
however great he may be. If, for a few minutes, 
we can rid our minds of the prejudgments which 
hide from us the real, susceptible, human nature 
of Jesus, we shall, in part at least, and in a per- 
fectly true way as far as it goes, understand why 
he asked this question. 

No man in the world is entirely sufficient unto 
himself; he was not meant to be so. He was 
made for fellowship and sympathy. That is 
neither a natural nor a true idea of life which 
makes one absolutely independent of his fellows, 
either by lifting him above them or sinking him 
below them. Our related hfe is as elemental and 
as necessary to complete being as our individual 
life. Our related life is indeed the sphere of 
morality; for right and wrong have no meaning 



222 The Religion of Hope, 

save in the contacts of man with men. It is the 
sphere of our virtues and our affections. To love 
and to be loved are possible only through our 
relation to other like beings. Even the affection 
of man for brutes is based upon a certain rudi- 
mentary likeness and kinship. Love for God is 
possible only as God is in personal relation to us 
through some real likeness. 

Certain rare experiences for a time isolate men 
from their kind. The thinker who thinks far draws 
apart from less strenuous minds around him, and 
in his deepest thought he finds fellowship among 
only the few. Genius is essentially lonely. It is 
all, however, a question of degree. The tie of 
man to men is never broken. This partial isola- 
tion of soul is not pleasurable, even when it is 
shght; when it is great it becomes a Gethsemane. 
Only a deep sense of divine communion can sus- 
tain one who by profound spiritual insight and 
much holiness is lifted above the world of com- 
mon men and women. As he draws nearer to 
God, his love for men and his sympathy with them 
grow greater indeed ; but at the same time the 
power of men to understand him and sympathize 
with him is lessened. Only when they rise to his 
level can there be entire responsiveness and com- 
munion between them and him. 

But in the common life that we know, and of 
which our lives are part, we feel the need of our 
fellows, — the need of sympathy and appreciation. 



A Question of the Heart. 223 

We like to be understood. It is not a mere liking: 
it is a necessity of our nature, if we are to be 
happy. This sense of kinship and community of 
life is not merely an essential to comfort ; our lives 
fulfil themselves in and through our fellow-men. 
Our love is greatened by its reflex in the love 
of others for us. Our thought attains full breadth 
and reality only when it comes back to us in the 
thought of others. Emerson, speaking of the 
quickening power of sympathetic appreciation on 
our minds, said : " I can say to you what I cannot 
first say to myself Other men are lenses through 
which we read our own minds." Our best thoughts 
are not born of solitude, though they may come 
into consciousness in solitude. They are the reflex 
of our mind's activity on other minds. Often 
in conversation with intellectual and sympathetic 
people we surprise ourselves by our capacity to 
think and utter wise or witty sayings. So also 
our affections unfold themselves in the stimulating 
environment of loving hearts. Our virtues are 
often elicited, confirmed, and enlarged by sympa- 
thetic and virtuous companionship. In the com- 
pany of heroes the craven soul becomes almost 
heroic. Generosity becomes almost easy to the 
covetous man when generous souls surround him. 
We need appreciation. We need the reassur- 
ing touch of a true sympathy. That sort of 
faith in ourselves which is essential to true 
courage often is dependent on the faith of others 



224 ^^^ Religion of Hope. 

in us. In every sphere of life men lean much 
on their fellows, and draw much from them. 
Particularly in the higher spheres, such as those of 
teaching and preaching, in whatever manner these 
functions may be fulfilled, do men need and long 
for the support of human sympathy and respon- 
siveness. Often he who has most courage, and 
most strength to stand alone, has the deepest crav- 
ing for appreciation. This craving is the mark 
of a noble nature. He who seems, and as far as 
the world is concerned is, most fully sufficient 
unto himself is least willing to be sufficient unto 
himself, and suffers most from isolation and from 
the coldness, misinterpretation, and opposition of 
those about him. The perception of this truth, 
which comes through experience, makes possible 
such utterance of it as we find in Helen Hunt's 
poem, *' The Teacher." 

To many of us, the higher and finer sorrows of 
the unappreciated spirit may not be intelligible : 
to the vast majority of men they certainly are 
not intelligible ; but every one has some capacity 
for suffering from want of sympathy and appre- 
ciation. How the heart sinks at the thought, 
which some incident — some experience of cold- 
ness, some rebuff of affection by rude indiffer- 
ence — has forced upon the mind! "I am not 
understood. Those to whom I look do not sym- 
pathize with me. My motives are misconceived. 
My real self is not appreciated." More often than 



A Question of the Heart. 225 

otherwise the thought does not shape itself into 
words : it is scarcely so much thought as feeling. 
Much of the pain and bitterness of life have 
their spring just here, — in the incapacity or un- 
willingness of our fellows to see just what we are 
and what we are aiming at, and in their unre- 
sponsiveness to our purpose or our mood. Here, 
in the family circle, is a child or youth whose 
nature, touched to finer issues perhaps than that 
of the others, suffers almost daily from the uncon- 
scious cruelty of paternal inappreciation or fra- 
ternal indifference. Here is a wife whose soul has 
capacities for love and service that are never rec- 
ognized, or whose mind is eager with desire for 
knowledge and tremulous with the aspiration to 
mingle with the deeper currents of human thought, 
but who must live on year after year, growing daily 
more deeply conscious that the best that is in her is 
unseen and unprized. Here is a husband in whose 
heart is a whole store of strengths on which there 
is no draft, or whose finest thought and tenderest 
feeling ever recoil upon 'himself from the hard 
surface of an insensible nature by his own fireside. 
Here is a teacher whose best resources are unper- 
ceived, and who drudges at the task of instruct- 
ing dull minds in commonplace facts, when he 
might soar and shine, and enlighten and inspire, 
were there any appreciation of his real power and 
any response to its appeal. Here is a preacher 
who has passed on from the rude elements of reli- 

15 



226 The Religion of Hope. 

gion in ordinance and dogma to the inspired per- 
ception of the highest and broadest truths of the 
spirit, but who is " cabin'd, cribb'd, and con- 
fined " by the duhiess, bigotry, and impenetrable 
sordidness of the " religious " men around him 
who have no capacity to understand him and 
power only to oppress his heart and hinder his 
free utterance. The prophet cries out of an an- 
guished soul: ''Who hath believed our report?" 

There is, perhaps, no feature of life more tragi- 
cal than this, — the littleness of appreciation which 
the finest spirits must meet. Real sympathy with 
the men and women that are nearest to us, true 
understanding of their hearts and minds, and just 
appreciation of the best that they can think and 
feel and do, are of slow growth in this world. 
Prophets and benefactors are prized after they are 
dead, and monuments of stone or brass express 
the tardy recognition of worth that contempor- 
aries could not see, or understand. 

It is the glory of the faithful souls in every walk 
of life that they did their work though it was not 
prized; that they spoke their word though, when 
it was uttered, it was unheard or was scorned ; 
that they loved though they were loved not, and 
died of hunger; that they fought the fight, though 
no victor's laurel gladdened their longing eyes as 
they grew dim with death. 

Was Jesus in any way dependent on the appre- 
ciation and sympathy of men? We cannot doubt 



A Question of the Heart. 227 

it. As surely as he was human did his human 
heart long for human recognition, human appreci- 
ation, and human responsiveness. It is in the nature 
of the good and sincere man to wish to be known 
and appreciated. This wish is not caused wholly 
by perception of the truth that one must, in some 
measure, be known and appreciated in order to 
be effective in accomplishing the full benefit that 
he is seeking to work out for men. It is certain 
that all highest spiritual blessing is a personal 
communication. "This is the eternal life," said 
Jesus, '* that they know thee, the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom thou didst send." To 
know and appreciate God is the ever inviting and 
ever uplifting goal of the spiritual mind. That 
men might know God, Jesus came and taught and 
lived and died. That men may know God, they 
must know him whom God hath sent. " No one 
knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth 
any know the Father, save the Son, and he to 
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him." 

Jesus' power to bless men was limited by their 
power of recognizing and appreciating him. Only 
as they rose to a true perception of his character 
and spirit and purpose could they become plastic 
to him, to be moulded by him into his own image. 
His very success as Saviour depended on his ulti- 
mately winning the love and faith and obedience 
of human souls; therefore it was vital to his 
mission that men should know who he, the Son 



228 The Religion of Hope, 

of man was. This is apparent throughout the 
Gospels. It appears in the preaching of the 
apostles recorded in the Acts. It is scarcely less 
clear in the Epistles of St. Paul and St. John. 
Genuine Christianity has won its way in the world, 
not through the promulgation of dogma and the 
enforcement of ritual, but through man's growing 
spiritual appreciation of Christ. The personal 
apprehension, the personal relation, the personal 
response, the personal devotion, and the personal 
assimilation to the mind and character of Christ, — 
this is the real triumph of the Gospel and the 
salvation of men. 

Undoubtedly Jesus' perception of this truth, that 
the success of his mission lay in winning men truly 
to know and appreciate him as the Son of God, 
was clear, and undoubtedly it underlay the question 
to his disciples : " Who do men say that the Son 
of man is?" 

But this was not all. The wish, the longing, for 
sympathy and appreciation was not caused simply 
by his perception of the truth that he must be 
known and loved in order to be effective in accom- 
phshing his purpose. The human heart in him 
longed for human recognition, human love, and 
human appreciation of his motive and thought 
and endeavor. 

We cannot carefully and sympathetically read 
the life of Jesus without feeling this again and 
again. Recall a striking incident recorded by St. 



A Question of the Heart. 229 

John in his Gospel. Jesus had set forth the 
spiritual nature of his mission and of discipleship 
to him in plainer and more searching speech than 
ever before. He had set forth the dependence of 
his disciples upon him in a figure so startling, even 
to the Oriental mind, that his hearers revolted. 
" Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and 
drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves." 
The explanatory words, *' It is the spirit that mak- 
eth alive ; the flesh profiteth nothing," rather con- 
firmed than lessened the revolt. Those sense- 
loving and self-seeking men who listened to him 
and who had even begun to follow him, outwardly 
at least, were dismayed and offended. They said : 
''This is a hard saying; who can hear it ?" And 
from that time many of his disciples went back. 
They were not equal to the test. They would 
follow him for the " loaves and fishes," or even 
while there was hope of loaves and fishes ; but 
they could not renounce themselves and take up the 
cross ; they had no deep and true sympathy with 
his nature or aim, and they could not rise with him 
to that realm of spiritual thought and feeling and 
endeavor where he always dwelt. What pathos, 
what sad and wistful yearning, there is in the 
Master's voice, as he turns to the chosen twelve 
with the inquiry, "Will ye also go away?" 

Those of you who are intimately acquainted with 
the New Testament will recall other incidents 
which show Jesus' instinctive demand for sympathy 



230 The Religion of Hope. 

and true appreciation. Why did he take Peter, 
James, and John with him on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration? Was it that he might give them a 
dramatic display, a sort of pedagogical repre- 
sentation, of his real, though invisible glory? No, 
no. With all his desire and purpose to instruct 
and inspire, and to qualify them by exceptional 
revelation for their exceptional work, he longed to 
have them know him more fully, and, in some 
deeper measure than ever before, to enter into the 
real meaning of his life and work. In Gethsemane 
also he took with him these three disciples. Poor 
and disappointing companions they proved ; but 
their dulness and inability to comprehend him only 
serve as a foil to bring out more clearly the yearn- 
ing of this vast spirit for fellowship and sympathy 
in the very crisis of his passion and pain. The 
heart of Jesus was reaching after sympathy and 
appreciation in this question : '' Who do men say 
that the Son of man is?" and still more in the 
direct appeal to his disciples: "Whom do ye say 
that I am?" There was much more than this 
in these questions, but this certainly was there. 
When Peter's reply came with prompt and earnest 
confession: *' Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God," there was a thrill of deep joy and 
exultation in Jesus' answer to the confession : 
*' Blessed art thou, Simon, Son of Jona, for flesh 
and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my 
Father who is in heaven." 



A Question of the Heart. 231 

This was a moment of pure, human joy to Jesus, 
notwithstanding that, a few hours later, Peter's 
inspiration was quenched by the ignorant egotism 
which impelled him to rebuke the Master for 
prophesying his own approaching violent death. 
There were such moments in the life of Jesus. 
Lonely as he was in the greatness and elevation of 
his nature, lonely as he must be by the very char- 
acter of his mission in the world, here and there he 
found responsive and sympathetic souls ; here and 
there he found those in whom his spirit awoke a 
true appreciation and love. It is reasonable, as 
well as pleasant, to think that the home in Bethany 
was one of the places where Jesus found a love that 
was unselfish and an appreciation that approxi- 
mated the purity and loftiness of his own spirit. 

But, for the most part, his work was done alone. 
He was not understood or he was misunderstood. 
Men did not deeply know him, nor did they prize 
him for what in him was highest and noblest. ** He 
came unto his own, and his own received him 
not." Few out of all the multitudes that thronged 
him in the city streets or by the lake-side had any 
true perception of his nature and mission. He trod 
the wine-press alone. Moved to wonder and ad- 
miration by his works of healing, some said : ** This 
is the Messiah." Solemnized and quickened in 
conscience by his teachings, some said doubtingly : 
" He is a prophet." Some gave him the name of 
Elijah, or Jeremiah; and others identified him with 



232 The Religion of Hope. 

the still remembered ascetic, John the Baptizer. 
** Even his brethren did not believe on him," and 
the disciples who were nearest to him and lived 
in daily intercourse with him did not know him 
till after he had drunk the cup of human suffering 
to the dregs and had passed beyond their sight. 

What all this experience of loneliness in the midst 
of men, this want of sympathy and appreciation 
from kindred spirits, meant to Jesus it is difficult to 
tell. It is an aspect of the Christ-life that we have 
not contemplated, or have not understood. That 
he was '' a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief" we dimly see, but we have had little true 
perception of the reality and range and depth of 
his sorrow. He was an alien in the midst of his 
own kin, made alien by the very greatness of his 
love, and the very fulness and elevation and purity 
of his nature. We wonder not that his earthly 
life was short. Jesus died a young man. Yet 
measured by its experiences, his life was long. 
From Bethlehem to Calvary was a far journey. 

But the main thing to note now, if we have come 
to any clear and true idea of Jesus' life, on the side 
of its want of human sympathy and appreciation, 
is, that through all he endured. No want of appre- 
ciation weakened his purpose; no lack of love for 
him lessened his love for men ; no unreceptiveness 
checked his giving; no misinterpretation diverted 
him from his aim; no coldness chilled his passion 
for the salvation of humanity. The pledge of the 



A Question of the Heart. 233 

conquest of the world was in his calm, assured 
patience. He knew himself, if men did not know 
him ; and he knew that the Father knew him. 
Once he said : ** I am not alone, for the Father 
who sent me is with me." 

Lonely as he once was in the midst of the world, 
he will not be lonely when again his shining feet 
press the walks of men. He is less lonely now as 
he moves invisibly among the people, still present 
though unseen, working in hearts his slow but sure 
work of grace, and saving the world by the vivify- 
ing power of his spirit in human life. Not known, 
not appreciated, not loved once, be sure he will be 
known, appreciated, loved and worshipped at last 
by all. To him every knee shall bow, and every 
tongue shall confess with thanksgiving that he is 
Lord. Peter's answer was prophetic. At last all 
the world will say: *' Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God." 

The appreciation of Jesus to which men will 
come, to which they are slowly coming, will be 
as many-sided as his nature. At one time his 
followers have emphasized, and even caricatured, 
the sacrificial aspect of his life. At another they 
have emphasized his power over nature and evil 
spirits. At still another, they have seemed to 
appreciate, with some breadth and fulness, his 
divine character, as revelatory of God. But all 
our vievv's have been limited. All our appreci- 
ations have been partial. We have looked upon 



234 T^^^^ Religion of Hope. 

him as a divine functionary, pre-eminent in a spe- 
cific relation to men ; but we have not grasped, 
and known, and felt, and loved his whole person- 
ality. But he can wait to be known, sure of man's 
entire heart and mind at last. And we shall know 
him as he is when we rise to his level, when we are 
like him. 

An apostolic writer tells us that ** for the joy 
that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross, 
despising the shame." Was not that forecasted 
joy, in part, the realization of the fulness of his 
own life in the life of a redeemed humanity? It 
must be so. 

As we contemplate this aspect of Jesus' experi- 
ence, which the incident related in the text brings 
vividly before us ; as we see Jesus subject to that 
kind of suffering, compared with which ordinary 
pains and trials are insignificant; as we see him, 
the very incarnation of love and sympathy, and 
loftiest thought and finest feeling, and purest virtue 
and freest self-sacrifice, living his life amidst cold- 
ness and sordidness and suspiciousness and inap- 
preciation, deepening sometimes into fierce enmity; 
as we see him loving men with a divine love, and 
pitying them with a divine pity, and reading their 
hearts with a divine insight, and knowing himself 
at the same time to be an alien in the world, un- 
recognized, save by here and there a rare soul ; — 
as we see him thus, at once the most human and 
the most divine of all men, made solitary by emi- 



A Question of the Heart. 235 

nence in suffering as well as eminence in worth, 
with a heart as wide as the world, with a capacity 
and desire for love and sympathy and appreciation 
as great as his capacity for loving and serving and 
understanding, yet living, toiling, and dying with- 
out the consciousness of being understood, prized, 
loved, and sympathized with in any great way by 
a single human soul ; as we see him, despite this, 
steadily fulfilling his mission, flinching from no 
trial, avoiding no burden, never faltering in his 
difficult path, setting his face steadfastly towards 
the great end for which the Father had sent him 
into the world, and bearing his mighty load until 
his heart broke on the cross, — what a revelation 
comes to us of his greatness ! What a manifesta- 
tion of God in humanity shines upon us ! What 
a flood of meaning is poured upon our life ! What 
lessons of faith and consecration and patience are 
pressed upon our minds ! And what disclosures 
are made to us of our own littleness, and weak- 
ness, and selfishness ! What humiliation we feel, 
remembering our complainings under trial, our 
faithlessness in hours of temptations, and our un- 
heroic and craven spirit when men have withheld 
from us their sympathy, or have met our efforts to 
serve them with resistance or contempt. 

As we contemplate the Son of man, let us learn 
some lessons that will lift our lives a little nearer 
to his. 

We, too, must often suffer from want of genuine 



236 The Religion of Hope. 

human love. Often we are misunderstood by 
those who are nearest to us, our best quaHties are 
overlooked, our noblest endeavors win little ap- 
preciation, and our purest motives are misinter- 
preted. Many a day we must toil with no reward 
of grateful recognition. The more finely we live, 
the purer our taste, the loftier our thoughts, and the 
more unselfish our deeds, the more surely much of 
the life about us will be inappreciative and unsympa- 
thetic. What then? Jesus walked alone though 
his heart hungered for companionship. We can 
be faithful. We can hold fast to the best. We 
can resist the temptation to let ourselves sink 
down to lower level. Every soul that rises toward 
God must mount by a cross of suffering; but he 
lifts the world toward God. We shall not be 
utterly alone. Though men know us not, the 
Father will know us. Though our path be lonely, 
Jesus passed that way before us, and walks it with 
us again. It is good to love, though we are not 
loved. It is good to serve, though our best service 
is not prized. It is good to attain heights of 
knowledge and spiritual vision, though we pass 
beyond the sympathetic recognition of our fellow- 
men. The life that mounts toward God is a power 
of salvation in the world. 

Be true to truth. Love and serve. Stand fast 
in the sweet and patient temper. Strive upward 
toward the mountain-summits of spiritual attain- 
ment. At last you will be known and understood 



A Question of the Heart. 237 

and loved. At last love and faith will have their 
full fruition. 

Another lesson we should learn from this study. 
It is the duty of understanding and appreciating 
others, and sympathizing with them. Often we 
are guilty of the same indifference and inapprecia- 
tion toward others as that from which we our- 
selves suffer. Sometimes our complaints are un- 
genuine or morbid or even selfish. Your brother 
does not understand you: do you understand 
him? Those about you have no sympathy with 
the best that is in you : have you sympathy with 
the best that is in them? You long for the word 
of true recognition and apppreciation from others: 
do you give them the word of true recognition and 
appreciation? You are hungry for love and fel- 
lowship: but there are many who hunger; what 
have you for them? The sorrows of Jesus never 
dimmed his eye to the sorrows of those about him. 
He understood and appreciated and loved each 
soul, though he was himself neither recognized nor 
loved. A single incident out of many vividly 
illustrates his power to think of others, even in the 
crisis of his own suffering. As he hung on the 
cross in the prolonged anguish of dying, he soothed 
the last moments of an expiring outlaw by his side 
with words of hope, and made provision for the 
earthly comfort of his mother by giving the pre- 
cious charge to a disciple. 

We easily grow selfish in our grief or pain ; but 



238 The Religion of Hope. 

the spirit of Jesus in us will ever turn our thoughts 
outward. We are not understood ; let us seek to 
understand the plain man by our side. We miss 
the quick and fine appreciation that would make 
our highest thoughts seem better worth cherishing, 
and our noblest purposes better worth attempting; 
let us appreciate the high thoughts that struggle 
into lame speech, and the purposes that move into 
imperfect action^ in the lives which are about us. 
We crave in vain the strong and clear-sighted love 
that would fill our hearts with mighty gladness ; 
let us love the longing souls that thirst and pine 
for true and tender human affection, within our 
own little circle. 

Sometimes in passionate grief and desire we 
ask if our fellow-men know us, and we yearn for 
the response which shall rightly interpret our 
nature and reconcile our spirits to the vocation to 
which God has called us. The response may not 
come here ; the reconciling word may not be 
spoken now; but, like Jesus, under the power of 
his transcendent example and in the strength of 
his steadfast spirit, we can live and love and hope 
and work and suffer and serve, sure that at last 
we shall not only know as we are known, but 
also shall be known to the uttermost of our aspira- 
tion and purpose, and loved to the full meas- 
ure of our deep longing, and gladdened with the 
perfect fruition of our highest endeavor. Mean- 
time we shall have blessed and sustaining fellow- 



A Qtcestion of the Heart. 239 

ship with Him who " came not be ministered unto 
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
many;" and in him and in the fulfilment of his 
mission our life will find its enduring and exceed- 
ing great reward. 



XIII. 

FOES IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 



Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her 

wretched crust, 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to 

be just ; 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands 

aside. 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, 
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had 

denied. 

For Humanity sweeps onward : where to-day the martyr 

stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his 

hands ; 
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots 

burn, 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 

James Russell Lowell. 



XIII. 

FOES IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 

A man's foes will be they of his own household. — Matt. x. 36. 

■\T T'HEN Jesus spoke these words he was fore- 
^ ' casting those experiences into which his 
disciples must come as the result of the new direc- 
tion of life that they took from him. Of necessity 
he was in antagonism to the ruling ideas and con- 
ventions of 'the world in which he moved. He 
was higher than the men of his time. His spirit 
was other than theirs. Not unnaturally did Phari- 
sees and Scribes hate him ; on the contrary, with 
perfect consistency, from their point of view, they 
sought his destruction. The only possible condi- 
tion of peace between him and them was that he 
should become like them, — in sympathy with 
their spirit and ideas, — or that they should be- 
come like him. The former was impossible; Jesus 
turned Pharisee would be Jesus lost from his posi- 
tion as spiritual reformer and Saviour of the world. 
No abdication and self-contradiction could be more 
violent and complete than that. The latter was 
impracticable; the Pharisee turned disciple would 



244 ^>^^^ Religion of Hope. 

be no longer a Pharisee. But the Pharisee was a 
creature not only of his time but of a long prepara- 
tory discipline. He represented the age in his 
point of view if not altogether in his peculiar 
opinions. Years and even centuries must pass 
before Phariseeism could be transformed into the 
spiritualism of Jesus. Antagonism was therefore 
inevitable between Jesus and the Pharisees. 

Furthermore, Jesus was set, not arbitrarily but 
from the very nature of the case, in opposition to 
the dominant spirit of the world. He stood for 
the great ideas and forces of love, truth, and right- 
eousness. He embodied the spirit that antagonizes 
selfishness as light antagonizes darkness. Selfish- 
ness was intrenched in the habits, institutions, and 
systems of the race. It was expressed no less in 
the religions of men than in their social and polit- 
ical customs. It revealed itself no less in their 
conceptions of God than it did in their estimation 
of man. To the brute force, the intolerant sensual- 
ism, and the tenacious sordidness of men, Jesus 
opposed his spiritual thoughts of God, of right- 
eousness, and of truth, as they are set forth in the 
Sermon on the Mount. He was understood by the 
leaders of society only sufhciently to be hated or 
despised. His ideas, men felt, as far as they could 
apprehend those ideas, would revolutionize life and 
make necessary a complete readjustment of their 
religious and social relations. In ignorance and in 
incapacity to understand him, rather than in pure 



Foes in the Household. 245 

malice, they set themselves against him. He was 
scarcely using figure of speech, therefore, when he 
said to his disciples: " Think not that I am come 
to send peace on earth ; I came not to send peace, 
but a sword." 

In proportion as men became in heart his disci- 
ples they were aligned to his position. Christianity 
was the beginning and evolution of a great spiritual 
and moral reform, — a reform that involved nothing 
less than the entire, ultimate transformation of 
humanity. The history of the past eighteen cen- 
turies is a history of the struggle of the ideas of 
Jesus Christ with the instinctive and persistent 
selfishness of men. We may explain that selfish- 
ness as the result of a primeval fall and deprava- 
tion, or as the survival of primeval animalism which 
slowly yields to the growing force of the spirit; 
but, however we explain it, selfishness is the one 
comprehensive obstruction to the triumph of the 
Christianity of Jesus. 

The disciples of Jesus by their very disciple- 
ship were set in antagonism to the prevalent life 
of the world. Brought by their Master into a new 
conception of humanity, as well as a new concep- 
tion of God, and into a new spirit of love and 
benevolence toward men, they were yet made par- 
ticipants in a fateful strife with the whole world. 

As the Jews persecuted Jesus because they did 
not understand him, and because they mainly felt 
only the tremendous contradiction, which, both in 



246 The Religion of Hope, 

teaching and character, he presented to their 
central and most cherished ideas of reh'gion and 
hfe; so Jews and Gentiles alike persecuted the 
disciples of Jesus. The disciples were identified 
with him. They realized in experience the truth 
of his saying, *' The disciple is not above his 
teacher, nor the servant above his lord. ... If they 
called the master of the house Beelzebub, how 
much more those of his household ! " To prepare 
them for such inevitable hostility and opposition, 
Jesus uttered his words of prophetic warning and 
counsel. 

The first three centuries of Christian history 
were marked by the struggle between Heathenism 
and Christianity which substantially ended, in the 
then known world, in the assumption of the throne 
of the Cassars by a Christian emperor. Outwardly, 
at least, there Vv^as peace thereafter between the 
Church and the world, save as strife was precipi- 
tated by the political aggressions of the Church. 
But within the Church the struggle was renewed. 
The ideas of Jesus were in antagonism to many 
of the institutions and dogmas that had developed 
in the Church. The Rome whose head was the 
pope became even more intolerant than the Rome 
whose head was Imperator and Pontifex Maximus 
in one. The simple, sincere, and utterly coura- 
geous follower of Christ found his bitterest enemies 
among those of his own household and of his own 
communion. Heresy, which early came to mean 



Foes in the Household. 247 

difference in opinion or belief from formal ecclesi- 
astical and theological standards, was pursued as 
relentlessly in the Church as formerly the heresy 
of Jesus was pursued by the orthodox Pharisees. 
Men killed each other for belief's sake, and thought 
that thereby they did God service. In many a 
long and tragical chapter of history we may read 
the sad fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy. 

When the integrity of Roman Christianity was 
broken by the German revolt under Luther, a new 
era began. Slowly advanced the emancipation of 
Europe from the iron grip of Roman Ecclesiasti- 
cism. Persecution continued and bloody storms 
swept over the Netherlands and the Waldensian 
Valleys and the fair fields of Southern France. But 
the beginning of the end of organized religious 
persecution in the Church came with Luther and 
Zwingle. 

In the Protestant Church the old spirit survived 
and made a history of Protestant persecutions 
which we read now with a blush of mingled shame 
and indignation. Always those who have been 
nearest Jesus Christ in their spirit and purpose, 
have been farthest from the prevalent ideas and 
institutions that bore the Christian name. 

The progress of society in the mass is slow. 
Prophetic souls outstrip the majority, and their 
singularity is punished with misunderstanding, con- 
tempt, hatred even, and sometimes death. But 
the progress of society is sure along the line of 



248 The Religion of Hope. 

Christ's thought, and each generation, while it 
persecutes its own prophets, builds monuments to 
those who were the martyrs of the preceding 
generation. 

With the cessation of physical violence in the 
attempted repression of divergent religious opinions 
and convictions, persecution did not cease. It 
became less brutal, but it continued. The strife 
was transferred to a higher plane. A man's foes 
no longer kill him as the Pharisees killed Jesus, as 
Rome killed the apostles, as the Inquisition killed 
the Netherlanders and the Huguenots and the Wal- 
densians; but the tongue still stabs, and often more 
deeply than the knife. Bigotry kindles fires of 
hate that burn sometimes not less fiercely than 
the fagot-flames that roared about martyr forms in 
Smithfield. Jesus is still in advance of the race, 
and those who press most closely after him must 
still find bitter verification of those words : '* A 
man's foes will be they of his own household.'* 
Thus in the history of the Church we read the ful- 
filment of Jesus' prophecy. 

But that prophecy has a fulfilment of another 
sort which may claim our attention a moment. 
Pre-eminently the religion of Jesus is the religion 
of love — love to God, and love to man. In the 
teaching of Jesus the love of God and the love of 
man are inseparable. They are notes that blend 
in a single chord ; they are colors that mingle in a 
single ray; they are the systole and diastole of one 
heart. 



Foes in the Household. 249 

Love is the law of life. Righteousness is the 
conformity of action to the impulse and law of love. 
As long as selfishness exists in the hearts of men, 
and expresses itself in social customs, and organ- 
izes itself in the institutions of political and eco- 
nomic and ecclesiastical life; so long must the strife 
which Jesus announced, and in his own experience 
illustrated, continue. The highest life is ever 
the highest achievement. History seems but the 
record of a prolonged Passion Week in which the 
sin of the world is expiated by the ever repeated 
crucifixion of suffering love. In every soul that 
suffers for righteousness' ^ake, for truth's sake, for 
love's sake, Jesus is seen, 

" Toiling up new Calvaries ever, with the cross that turns 
not back." 

They who will follow the Christ fill up the meas- 
ure of the sufferings of the Christ by which, 
through the mystery of love and pain, he is 
redeeming the world. 

Is it not true that in the endeavor to live accord- 
ing to the idea and spirit of Jesus Christ, a man's 
foes are still they of his own household? In 
society it is the life that is nearest us which often 
most antagonizes our holiest purposes. In the 
circle of our most intimate relations spring up the 
subtlest temptations and the most powerful opposi- 
tions to a life in the spirit. The man who would 
square his life to the law of Jesus, and shape his 



250 The Religion of Hope. 

thinking in utter sincerity by the teaching of Jesus, 
often must be like Abraham, who, to save his faith 
in the only God, broke away from the home and 
society in wliich polytheism and nature-worship 
were interwoven with the whole fabric of daily life, 
and pushed his way across plain and mountain, to 
a strange land. We need to make, perhaps we can 
make, no geographical pilgrimage; but in our 
deepest thought we must journey apart and live in 
a strenuous solitude. 

How often is it the case that a man finds in 
the narrow circle of his own home and fireside the 
strongest enemies to that which he sees to be his 
best life ! Sad and tragical enough it is, yet true, 
that the rough battle-field of the world brings a 
man into no such crucial trials of his spirit as he 
sometinres finds in the little sphere of his most 
intimate relations. Out in the world, amid its 
tumult and wild strife of brute forces, he wins a 
victory which, in the seclusion of the home, is 
wrested from him. Triumphant there, he is bafifled 
and beaten here. Jesus said to the group of dis- 
ciples that gathered about him' in closest intimacy 
with his daily life : *' One of you shall betray me." A 
Hebrew Psalmist, in an hour of bitter experience, 
cried out: "Mine own familiar friend, in whom I 
trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up 
his heel against me." Many a soul has tasted the 
same cup of disappointment and trial — not always 
through the malice, far oftener through the weak- 
ness or the ignorant zeal, of those nearest to him. 



Foes in the HoiLsehold. 251 

Every one in this world is subject to manifold 
temptations. He who would live toward God, 
who would increasingly grasp the truth, not as 
idea simply but as quality and power of life, must 
overcome the gravitation of his sensuous nature. 
He must resist the tyranny of those appetites 
which, controlled, serve, but, uncontrolled, fetter 
and debase the soul. Whatever associations and 
fellowships weaken him in this struggle and mul- 
tiply the occasions and causes of temptation are 
foes to his real life. The most powerful of these 
foes are met within the circle of his private ac- 
quaintance. Often the very strength of a man is 
the chief peril of his friend. Often the very secur- 
ity of close companionship is the utmost insecurity 
from fatal temptation. Only the strongest souls 
are capable of receiving as well as giving friend- 
ships that are at once intimate and wholly benefi- 
cent. My weakness may be your peril just in 
proportion to your love for me. You may stab 
me to the heart when most you would serve me. 

Here is a truth which we do not sufficiently un- 
derstand. To be a friend is to be laid under 
sacred bonds of righteousness and sincerity. A 
recognized enemy puts us on our guard ; we lay 
aside our armor and let vigilance sleep when we 
enter the circle of those we love. And how many 
temptations there are that seem not wholly evil. 
Evil is so mixed with good that it is hard to dis- 
criminate, and while we consider and debate we 



252 The Religion of Hope, 

are undone. The foe from afar had assailed us in 
vain; the foe in our own household has smitten 
us to the heart. 

" The lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with 
outright, 
But a He which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight." 

The sin that is part a virtue is the sin that most 
powerfully tries us and most surely finds our 
weakness. In a deeper sense than we have 
thought, perhaps, " a man's foes are they of his 
own household." 

But again, it is not, after all, the common terhp- 
tations and oppositions to right living that we find 
on the level of our ordinary sensuous life, which 
are the most difficult to deal with. He who would 
live closest to Jesus Christ must share not only the 
solitude of Jesus, but he must feel the chill and 
shock of that opposition which springs from the 
unsympathetic life about him, and the misunder- 
standings and misinterpretations which often he 
must bear from those on whose sympathy he 
seems to have strongest claim. Sympathy, in any 
deep sense, is possible only where there is com- 
munity of experience. If one thinks deeply, and 
rigorously follows his thought into the higher ranges 
of moral and spritual truth, he must, in so far, draw 
apart from those who are not given to the same 
high endeavor. We are set in a certain environ- 
ment of ideas and customs and sympathies. It is 



Foes in the Household. 253 

not entirely easy for one to fall below this environ- 
ment. We are so held by it that it is to us in 
some sense a conservator of virtue. Some men 
are not as bad as they would like to be. They 
are held to a certain decency and morality by the 
stress of their surroundings. But if it is not easy 
to fall below the level of the life that is about us, 
far less easy is it to rise above our environment, 
— for example to think above and beyond the 
current thought, to feel more finely than the 
common sensibility, and to attain a keener spirit- 
ual insight than that of those nearest to us. He 
who attempts it finds oppositions and subtle, un- 
reasoning enmities of which he had not dreamed. 
Hence a real rise in spiritual life is both an 
achievement and a victory. Seldom is the thinker 
who climbs above the level of contemporaneous 
"orthodox" opinion congratulated as a pioneer. 
Often is he first wondered at as singular, then 
challenged as a transgressor, and then condemned 
and shot at as a blasphemer and outlaw. Have 
you not felt, some of you who listen to me, again 
and again, as you have wakened to a higher per- 
ception of truth and a holier ideal of life, and 
have striven toward that truth, that ideal, — have 
you not felt the chill of unsympathetic feeling, 
the rebuff of stolid indifference, the resistance 
of conventional belief, and the paralyzing touch 
of misinterpretation, even from some who are 
nearest to you in social and domestic relations? 



254 The Religion of Hope. 

He who leaves the beaten path to climb the moun- 
tain-side must often walk alone. That were grief 
enough. But often he must find the hardness 
of the way made more hard by those who are knit 
to his heart by many ties. 

Who that has striven toward a higher life of 
thought and action — that has endeavored to press 
closer to Jesus Christ — but has felt, at some time, 
the pained astonishment of the soul that cried : — 

" Is it true, O Christ in heaven, 

That the wisest suffer most ? 
That the strongest wander farthest, 

And most hopelessly are lost ? 
That the mark of rank in nature 

Is capacity for pain, 
And the anguish of the singer 

Makes the music of the strain ? " 

Deep and far-reaching is the truth of those words 
which Jesus spoke to his disciples : '' Think not 
that I came to send peace on the earth ; I came 
not to send peace, but a sword. For I came 
to set a man at variance with his father, and a 
daughter with her mother, and a bride with her 
mother-in-law ; and a man's foes will be they of his 
own household." Learning the meaning of these 
words, we begin to understand also the meaning 
of these seemingly harder words : " He that loves 
father or mother more than me, is not worthy of 
me ; and he that loves son or daughter more than 
me, is not worthy of me. And he that does not 



Foes in the Household. 255 

take his cross and follow after me, is not worthy 
of me. He that finds his life shall lose it; and he 
that loses his life for my sake shall find it." 

But let us not think that the truth is a mere dis- 
integrating force, wakening antipathies and pro- 
ducing incessant conflict. Strife must be in order 
that abiding peace may come at last. Though 
prophetic spirits take a lonely precedence in the 
march of human progress, they draw the world 
after them ; though their way here often is the via 
dolorosa of rejection and the cross, at last the cross 
becomes the sign of final victory, the pledge of a 
complete redemption of the world, and the seal 
of a perfected spiritual unity of all men in an 
eternal fellowship of love and peace. 

Thus far I have spoken of the foes which exter- 
nally assail him who would live the life of the 
spirit. The words of Jesus : '' A man's foes will 
be they of his own household," are susceptible of 
an application still more intimate and personal. 
The greatest battles of life are fought in the arena 
of a man's own heart. His most powerful and his 
most insidious foes are within himself. The house- 
hold of his daily thought and desires and purposes 
and imaginings contains enemies subtle and strong. 
In his own bosom the battle must be joined ; in his 
own soul the victory must be won. The solid and 
significant outcome of life is not the things a man 
has done, but the something noble and strong and 
pure which he has become. Character, the pro- 



256 The Religion of Hope. 

duct, in some real sense, of our choices, is also 
the achievement of our inward strifes and en- 
deavors. 

"Sure I must fight, if I would reign." 

runs the familiar hymn ; and this fight, which life 
is, is primarily with one's undisciplined and un- 
tempered self. No temptation from without could 
touch a man if there were not the temptability 
within. If " Know thyself" is the counsel of 
wisdom, *' Rule thyself" is the command of right- 
eousness. But often the very qualities and sus- 
ceptibilities in us that, ruled and chastened, con- 
stitute our highest virtues, are also the sources of 
our greatest peril. The generous instinct of the 
youthful heart may make but the more riotous 
prodigal. Imagination, that regal gift, may be- 
come 

*' Procuress to the Lords of Hell." 

Sensitiveness to the beautiful may degenerate into 
the mawkish madness of sentimentalism. And 
passion that was meant to warm and quicken, 
may flame into a baleful fire that sears the heart 
and destroys the soul. There are survivals of 
animalism and instincts of selfishness in us that 
must be subdued and extirpated. Here, within, 
are our subtlest and strongest foes. There is no 
evasion of these, if we would obtain spiritual man- 
hood and womanhood. They must be overcome. 
Is this our misfortune? 



Foes ill the Household. 257 

" No, when the fight begins within himself, 
A man 's worth something . . . the soul wakes and grows — 
Prolong that battle through his life ! 
Never leave growing till the life to come 1 " 

I have not spoken of the helps — specially the 
one all-inclusive divine help — which all need who 
are striving toward the true and the good. Your 
thought has already supplied this seeming lack in 
my discourse. The possibility of rising — of over- 
coming indifference, misinterpretation, and enmity 
without — lies in the sympathy, the fellowship, the 
love, and the power of the indwelling Son of God. 
He who walks with Jesus can walk alone, sure that 
at last he will have unlimited company. He can 
bear the sneer of the cynic, the wrath of the bigot, 
and the coldness of the unsympathetic friend, 
steadfast in the prophetic faith that truth and love 
will at last bring the perfect reconciliation. He 
can resist the stress of temptation, and endure the 
blows of sorrow through the power distilled from 
constant divine communion. He can overcome 
fate itself through the faith which is ** the victory 
that overcometh the world." 

So, too, his interior battles he can wage to suc- 
cessful issue because it is God who works in him 
both to will and to do. The secret of strength is 
in the revelation of God to and in the individual 
soul, and in the abiding love and fellowship of him 
who " of God is made unto us wisdom, and right- 
eousness, and sanctification, and redemption." 
17 



XIV. 

NOT DESTRUCTION BUT FULFILMENT. 



Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



XIV. 

NOT DESTRUCTION BUT FULFILMENT. 

I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. — Matt. v. 17. 

IV /TY purpose at present is to elucidate the prin- 
-^'-*- ciple that underHes these words, rather 
than to show their historic fulfilment in the action 
and teaching of Jesus both during his public min- 
istry and during the centuries that have elapsed 
since his ascension. 

Jesus did destroy very much, but destruction 
was not the end at which he aimed. His purpose 
was to plant, to quicken, to upbuild. However 
much he took away, he put more and better in its 
place. If he destroyed men's trust in legal ob- 
servances, he drew them to a rational and effica- 
cious trust in God. If he destroyed traditions, he 
gave vital truths. If he destroyed institutions, 
he gave power to construct other and better 
institutions. 

He was not a mere iconoclast, but a builder. 
His spirit is the most powerful constructive force 
in history. He whom the Pharisees both hated 
and feared as the destroyer of religion, re-created 
religion and gave it a place and power in the world 
beyond the prevision of all prophetic dreams. 



262 The Religion of Hope. 

In this particular of planting and developing, 
Jesus is the supreme exemplar, as he is in so 
many other ways. We need to study this aspect 
of his character and work to-day, when the ten- 
dency to destroy is so powerful, when there is 
such impatience with the old and the over-worn. 
On every side, in the Church and in the State, 
there is a growing discontent with that which has 
long exercised the authority of custom. The 
social order is challenged and questioned, and 
here and there its overthrow is both urged and 
attempted. The dogmas and forms of the Church 
are subjected to close and ever severer criticism, 
and criticism is steadily pouring itself into action. 

" The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

The present time is marked by a powerful 
movement for reform that invades all fields, — 
political, religious, and social. Those who lead 
in this rising enterprise are mainly the young; 
not merely the young in years, but the young in 
mind and spirit. I would not say one word, if I 
could, to check the movement. It is a sign and 
product of life, and God is in it. The world is 
still inchoate and undeveloped. Humanity is yet 
in its spiritual childhood. There is more truth 
than men have yet taken into consciousness. 
There is a better social order than we have yet 



Not Destruction hut Fulfilment. 263 

attained. There is a holier Church than has yet 
appeared. History is but the slow unfolding of 
God's purpose, and every advance is a fuller revela- 
tion in terms of thought or organic civilization of 
God in his world. 

But the time is one of danger and temptation; 
and I would, if I could, speak a word of counsel, 
especially to the young. The tendency to destroy 
is deep laid in our nature. Man is both conserva- 
tive and destructive. He is usually destructive in 
his youth and conservative in old age. It has 
been wisely remarked that the conservative is only 
the radical gone to seed. The history of religious 
thought strikingly illustrates the truth that the 
conservatism of to-day was radicalism yesterday ; 
just as the radicalism of to-day will be conserva- 
tism to-morrow. The transition from the one to 
the other which time and growth effect is be- 
coming more rapid. What strides have been 
made in twenty years ! Twenty years ago the 
doctrine of evolution was heresy in nearly every 
pulpit and theological seminary; to-day it is 
almost, if not quite, the main formative principle of 
philosophical theology, and has its advocates and 
expounders in innumerable pulpits and in half the 
theological schools in the land. Indeed the phrase- 
ology of evolutionary thought is unconsciously 
employed by many who are not aware that they 
have moved forward with the moving planet into 
fuller light. 



264 The Religion of Hope. 

The tendency to destroy, I say, is deep-laid in 
our nature. It is the instinct of the child. He 
delights to smash things. We may analyze this 
instinct into (i) ciLviosity, the desire to see inside of 
things and know how they are made. Give your 
watch to your child, and he will, if he can, break it 
open, to see the wheels go round. He cuts open 
the bellows to see where the wind comes from. 
The little girl dissects her doll in order to pene- 
trate the mystery of its form. 

This instinct of destruction is partly the expres- 
sion (2) of the child's pure delight in exerting 
force. He lives mainly in his senses and loves to 
feel himself in contact with things. There is for 
him an experience of triumph and a glow of exult- 
ant joy in his small demolitions. His impulse is 
not bad. The careful and anxious parent thinks 
it an evidence of depravity, but it is not; it is only 
the upleaping of the nascent power within him 
that, by and by, if not misdirected, will appear in 
the energy of the inventor, the trader, the builder 
of railroads and mills, perhaps in the creator of 
immortal poems, or pictures, or stately systems of 
philosophy. That which makes the child's de- 
structive instinct seem bad is his lack, through 
ignorance, of any true appreciation of values. To 
the child things seem to come easily and he natur- 
ally makes them go easily. He has not yet learned 
that construction is a slow and costly process. By 
and by he will learn it, perhaps in painful ways, 



Not Destruction but Fulfilment. 265 

and thus will discover his true function in the 
world. 

The young man has the same impulse, qualified 
indeed by his larger knowledge, but still full of 
menace to the existing order of things. As he 
comes in contact with the world he finds customs, 
institutions and rules of life that seem to him *' fair 
game " for the exercise of his destructive energy. 

In the first place, he has a strong sense of unde- 
fined power, and an inherent love of struggle. As 
boys often fight " for the fun of it," so young man- 
hood pours out its energy in belligerent ways for 
the sheer sake of overturning something that by 
its very immovableness seems to challenge him. 

There is in youth, too, an immense capacity 
for ideals. Often it is full of instinctive chiv- 
alry. Some things seem wrong and restrictive of 
the finest life. The ardent young knight sees only 
the palpable obstruction, and not its causes and the 
reasons of its being; and he runs atilt upon it 
with frank resolution to overturn it and put it out 
of the way. 

This instinct appears when the young and vigor- 
ous mind is confronted by traditions and dogmas. 
That a dogma may be the slow growth of centuries 
does not abash him. He questions everything. 
He would question gravitation and the multiplica- 
tion table if they stood in his way. Political con- 
stitutions, social customs, commercial methods, 
everything, is answerable to the eager inquisitive- 



266 The Religion of Hope. 

ness of his spirit. Most interesting, because in 
some respects most important, is the attitude of 
awakening mind toward rehgion, especially -as re- 
ligion presents itself under the form of creeds and 
religious ceremonies and institutions. There is in 
the awakened mind of youth a lack of that disci- 
plined reverence which comes only from long ex- 
perience. There is impatience of limitation and 
mystery, and there is a fme egotism. There is also 
the temptation to use power for the sake of its 
mere exercise and the temptation arising from the 
sense of importance which power to attack and 
destroy gives. This last temptation is not confined 
to youth. Some men are always in the opposition 
because thus only can they make themselves felt 
and draw attention to themselves. The smallest 
power can obstruct. The littlest mind can delay 
if it cannot effectually hinder progress. Pie who 
has not force to draw the load onward, may stop 
its advance by blocking the wheels. The tempta- 
tion to do this, however, seldom assails youth, for 
youth is generous, if rash; it rather attacks the 
old, than obstructs the new. 

In such a time as the present there is a tremen- 
dous temptation to young men to be iconoclasts. 
They have the zeal of the men in the parable who 
would rush into the field and tear up the cockle 
and other weeds, regardless of havoc to the wheat. 
For example, they confound a questionable theol- 
ogy with all theology ; a doubtful custom with the 



Not Destruction hit Fulfilment. 267 

human need that created the custom ; and an out- 
grown institution with the organic law and tendency 
of human Hfe. 

I will specify that you may see exactly what I 
mean. The crass doctrine of prayer, which makes 
the ignorance or whim of the creature direct the 
power that administers the universe, is seen to be 
obnoxious to sound reason, and there is a tremen- 
dous jump at once to the conclusion that prayer is 
fruitless and even absurd, or else that it is merely a 
spiritual gymnastic exercise. A certain doctrine 
of atonement is seen to be repugnant both to intel- 
ligence and morality, and the inference is drawn 
that there is no vicariousness in Christ's life and 
death or in the character of God. The theory of 
the verbal infallibility of the Sacred Scriptures 
manifestly is untenable, and therefore it is assumed 
that there is no inspiration and no certain revela- 
tion of the divine will in those Scriptures. The 
Church is seen to be deeply marked by the defects 
of human nature, and the conclusion is hastily 
reached that the Church has no supreme value and 
authority. These roughly sketched specifications 
are sufficient to illustrate the tendency and tempta- 
tion that work in many minds. Acting in such 
ill-considered and hasty ways, and ruled by the 
iconoclastic temper, the mind makes havoc of the 
rhost substantial and precious treasures of human 
life. 

Now it must be admitted that destruction is 



268 The Religion of Hope. 

necessary to progress. Errors and abuses, the 
heritage of long years, grow into vast burdens and 
obstructions. They must be aboHshed. The pio- 
neer's axe must destroy the forest and make way for 
agriculture and civilization. The quartz in the 
mountain must be crushed that the gold may be 
extracted. So old custom must be broken up that 
a better order may prevail. Slavery and serfdom 
must be destroyed, even at the cost of numberless 
human lives and fortunes, that liberty may be real- 
ized. Superstition must be slain that reason may 
rule and pure faith may live. Wrong ideas must 
be overthrown and imprisoning forms must be 
shattered, that truth may nourish the soul and pure 
piety may sanctify the life. 

But while all this is true, there are other things 
that are also true. Let us consider some of these, 
(i) Destruction is easy, and, of itself fruitless; 
while construction is difficult and costly and slow. 
It is easy to do mischief A child can burn a 
palace which requires many crafty men and many 
months of labor to build. A boy can wreck a rail- 
way train which takes many hands and much skill 
to construct. A malicious tongue can work harm 
in a few minutes which years of life can scarcely 
repair. Yes, it is easy to destroy, and the ambi- 
tion merely to pull down and demolish is, of itself 
a low ambition. 

(2) Destruction, necessary as it is to progress, 
may be premature. A man's religion may be 



Not Destruction but Fulfilment. 269 

fetishism; but it is the best he has. Better that 
than none at all, for the lowest form of religion 
keeps alive the religious susceptibility of human 
nature, and that susceptibility is the spring of the 
noblest character as well as of the greatest happi- 
ness. "Though it be true," said Lowell, "that the 
idol is the measure of the worshipper, yet the 
worship has in it the germ of a nobler religion." 
To destroy the savage man's fetichism without giv- 
ing him something else that is better is to rob 
and injure him. 

(3) Destruction is best accomplished by con- 
struction. I know that some evils and errors of 
man must be overcome by stern and relentless 
conflict. I know that sometimes only volcanic 
upheaval is able to loosen the roots of gigantic 
wrong. But there is a lesson for us in the fact 
that most of the transformations in nature, in the 
geologic history of the globe, are the result of 
slow and silent forces. The millennium of silent 
growth and change accomplishes far more in 
making the habitable earth than many cataclysms. 
The method of nature and of nature's God is to 
crowd out the old by the growing force of the 
new. If the old leaves in the wood cling to the 
twigs beyond their time the new growth pushes 
them off in the spring. 

(4) It is nobler and more beneficent to be a 
builder, a creator, than it is a puller down and a 
destroyer. The pages of history are full of the 



270 The Religio7i of Hope. 

names of men who have ravaged kingdoms, and 
burned cities, and furrowed fair lands with graves. 
But the Muse is rewriting her annals. Already 
history is telling the story of the constructors and 
creators rather than of the destroyers. It is a 
noble and pure ambition that urges men to plant 
and fashion, to change evil custom by instituting 
a good custom, to supplant the old faith with the 
new. 

Let me ask you to apply these truths, first of 
all, to your own personal life. Each of us has 
defects and evils in himself to overcome. The 
problem of self-reform and self-development is 
largely a problem of method. Take the matter 
of evil habits into which you have fallen. How 
shall you deal with them? You will not deal with 
them most successfully by a mere tour de force, — 
by a passionate and sudden revolt. Destroy an 
evil habit by promptly cultivating a good habit. 
Oppose to the bad force a good force, and utilize 
the habit-making tendency of your nature in the 
formation of habits that are wholesome and pure. 

Then, in the matter of thinking, when you find, 
or reasonably suspect, that ideas which you have 
held are mistaken, do not at once throw your whole 
intellectual nature into revolt and exhaust your 
strength in criticism and attack. Seek to supplant 
wrong ideas by right ideas. Instead of merely 
combating error in yourself or in others, strive 
to discover and grasp truths. Open your minds 



Not Destruction but Fulfilment. 271 

freely to the instructions of the hoHest and the 
wisest men whom you know. There is no real 
help for you in the camp of deniers and scoffers. 
Be patient, and be hospitable to every gleam of 
truth that may come to you from nature or the 
experience of men. If you are lost in a dark cave 
the way to do is to move toward the light, and not 
to fight the darkness until at last in disgust and 
despair you are ready to deny that there is any 
sun. 

In the matter of the affections, expel a base 
love by cultivating a pure love. There is no 
power in sheer will to cast out of the heart a pol- 
luting occupant comparable with the expulsive 
force of a new and exalting passion. Apply this 
principle to the whole of life, — to companion- 
ships : seek the good while you abandon the evil ; 
to books : devote yourselves to the great and 
pure, while you turn away from the vulgar and 
corrupting; to occupations: busy your energies 
with helpful tasks while you forsake the unworthy 
or mischievous ; and to thoughts : extrude the low 
and frivolous and sensual by addressing your 
minds to the noble and refined. 

Let me ask you also to apply the truths which we 
have been considering to your related life, to your 
social and public activities, (i) Seek first and 
always not to destroy, but to plant, to build, and 
to create. *' Any beast can do mischief; " it is 
man's high prerogative to do good. Every one 



2/2 The Religion of Hope. 

can add something to the intellectual and moral 
as well as to the material values of life. A good 
life is the best argument for righteousness. It is 
much more difficult to work constructively than 
it is to attack and demolish, and it is not nearly 
so likely to bring notoriety; but it will accom- 
plish infinitely more, and it will dignify your whole 
life in the eyes of the world as well as in your 
own consciousness. (2) Destroy by superseding 
the false with the true. In the Church, supplant 
dead formality, not by an iconoclasm that issues in 
formlessness, but by filling existing forms with 
new life, and thus modifying forms to meet the 
changing exigencies of the ever growing soul. 
Supplant outgrown dogmas, not by throwing theol- 
ogy overboard and by dogmatically denying all 
creeds; but by producing better expressions of 
truth already known, and by striving after the at- 
tainment of higher truths. 

The anarchist in the social realm has his counter- 
part in the religious realm. The anarchist would 
destroy all society and government, so the radical 
would destroy all objective religion. But, as be- 
neath the defects and abuses that mark social and 
political life there is a solid and enduring treasure 
of righteousness and law, so beneath all the errors 
and faults of creed and Church there is a solid 
and enduring treasure of goodness and truth. 
Neither the anarchist nor the radical is the true 
reformer. The true reformer works constructively. 



Not Destritction but Ftdfilment. 273 

He does destroy, but destruction is incidental to 
his aim. He builds more than he demolishes, and 
plants more than he uproots. 

The process of true reform is so slow, so diffi- 
cult, and so costly, and there are so many hin- 
drances to progress presented by human stupidity 
and selfishness and moral and intellectual inert- 
ness, that he who contemplates the enterprise of 
bettering human life is beset by the temptation 
to give up, to let things remain as they are, and 
to draw apart in indifference or cynicism ; or to 
grow impatient and shatter things, to break down 
and destroy indiscriminately. 

Resist both temptations. Believe in progress 
and improvement. Seek persistently the larger 
truth, the purer form and the higher state. Let 
abolition and destruction serve the beneficent, con- 
structive purpose. The process begins within. 
** Make the tree good and its fruit good." Strive 
to free your minds from bondage to errors which 
are half-truths by moving onward into the fuller 
truth. Follow Jesus Christ, the true Reformer. 
Work along his lines. Love God and your fellow- 
man. Believe in the good purpose of God and 
the good possibility of mankind. And make your 
life one constant endeavor to hasten the perfect 
salvation of the world and the perfect evolution 
of the kingdom of God. 



XV. 
THE JOY OF THE LORD. 



For only work that is for God alone 

Hath an unceasing guerdon of delight, 

A guerdon unaffected by the sight 

Of great success, nor by its loss o'erthrown. 

All else is vanity beneath the sun, 

There may be joy in doittg, but it palls when do7te. 

Frances Ridley Havergal. 



XV. 



THE JOY OF THE LORD. 

His Lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful 
servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make 
thee ruler over many things ; enter thou into the joy of thy 
Lord. — Matt. xxv. 23. 

nnHE first thing that strikes us as we read this 
-^ parable is that the reward is given to the 
faithful, and it is the fidehty of the servant, not 
the amount of results achieved by him, that at- 
tracts and measures the reward. We are very apt 
to think of this parable as having application only 
to the end of our earthly life, and as indicating 
the divine judgment upon our entire career. Un- 
doubtedly it does refer to the conclusion and 
final outcome of our earthly life, but that by no 
means exhausts its meaning. We are prone to 
push off to the end of the world the apphcation of 
a good many of Christ's sayings. For example, 
how many there are still who think of " the 
coming of the kingdom " as a remote future and 
climacteric event, instead of being, as it is, the 
process of human history and the present and con- 
tinuous fulfilment of the divine will. Jesus said: 



278 TJie Religion of Hope. 

" The kingdom of God is among you; " it is here, 
though we may not see it. In thinking of the 
parable now before us, we are apt to give an 
exclusive prominence to the idea of the second 
coming of Christ, as suggested and illustrated by 
the coming of the Lord to make a reckoning with 
his servants. Of course there is an element of 
truth in this view, but it is not the whole truth, nor 
is it even the largest truth. There are comings of 
the Lord in the present time, and reckonings with 
his servants now ; there are also promotions for 
faithfulness and punishments for recreancy. In 
the continuous experience of human society these 
are not always discernible by human eyes, espe- 
cially if they have not been trained to look deeply 
into life and to judge it from the spiritual point of 
view. Yet it is possible to see, again and again, 
exemplifications of Christ's teaching concerning 
the divine judgment on our life in the experience 
of our fellows and of ourselves. Many a humble 
soul is advanced to higher work because of con- 
spicuous faithfulness in that which is lower, and 
many a soul is dismissed from high service, or 
reduced to a lower order, because of unfaithfulness. 
We must remember that the servants in the par- 
able are not discharged from duty, as if they had 
reached the end of their service, but the faithful 
are promoted to larger service. This is full of 
suggestion. " He that hath, to him shall be 
given." He that does the work set to his hand 



The Joy of the Loj'd. 279 

will find other work adapted to his enlarged capa- 
bility. We have here an illustration of a perma- 
nent principle in the divine administration of life. 
The promotion to larger service is the reward of 
fidelity. This is distinctly implied in the words, 
" Thou hast been faithful over a few things ; I will 
make thee ruler over many things." But a further 
reward is suggested in the words, ** Enter thou 
into the joy of thy Lord; " and this reward is no 
more to be referred exclusively to the remote future 
than is the promotion to higher service. 

Certainly the "joy of the Lord" will be fmmd 
in the ultimate glorious fruition of the Lord's 
great enterprise, to which the faithful servant has 
contributed. We may legitimately look forward 
to that as the soldier looks forward to the final 
triumph of his leader and his cause, and the estab- 
lishment of perpetual peace; but the "joy of the 
Lord " is found also here and now, and continu- 
ously, in the higher work and the greater capacity 
and the closer fellowship with the Master which 
are attained by faithfulness. This, after all, is the 
immediately important truth — faithfulness has its 
reward in the present life, both in weightier trusts 
and in a deeper entrance into the purposes of 
God. Just here is disclosed to us the meaning of 
great trial and severe struggle which the soul has 
borne with fidelity. God is educating us to larger 
capability for work and larger capacity for appre- 
ciating his nature and understanding his purposes 
with man. 



28o The Religion of Hope. 

There is, then, a " joy of the Lord " which is dis- 
covered in faithful work or faithful endurance, as 
well as a "joy of the Lord" into which we shall 
enter as the final reward of earthly endeavor and 
experience. The thing of chief importance is 
fidelity; that underlies everything. " He who is 
faithful over a few things," says George MacDonald, 
** is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether 
you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a rag- 
ged class, so you be faithful. Faithfulness is all." 

But the special thought that I would have you 
consider now is the ** joy of the Lord " actually 
discovered and experienced in the service of God. 
This reward and accompaniment of faithfulness is not 
postponed; it is not artificial ; it is not the factitious 
rapture of the ascetic saint ; it lies in the direct line 
of true development, and is the immediate and con= 
tinuous product of sincere and patient endeavor. 

It is a familiar truth that man finds a real and 
hearty pleasure in action ; not merely in exercise, 
though the use of limb and faculty in health is 
always pleasurable, but in action that is effective. 
That is, there is a real pleasure in any sort of true 
accomplishment. Matthew Arnold said: "It is 
undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, 
that a free creative activity, is the true function of 
man; it has proved to be so by man's finding in it 
his true happiness." The truth is suggested in 
these words, but it is neither adequately defined 
nor is its full significance indicated. 



The Joy of the Lord. 281 

To make something is the dehght of the healthy 
child, boy orgirl. The pleasure found in action 
increases in proportion to increase in fulness and 
range of power. The great part of the joy of life 
is found in ever accomplishing something. We 
make too much, oftentimes, of the attractiveness 
of mere objective reward. If work is rational and 
progressive it always has a charm. In no sphere 
may this be seen more clearly than in that of the 
education of the young. Pestalozzi and Frobel were 
right in their belief that education should always 
be a pleasurable process to the child. For a long 
time it was considered that studies were valuable 
in proportion to their repulsiveness to the student. 
Instead of following Shakespeare's maxim, ** In 
brief, sir, study what you most affect," teachers 
were disposed to say to a pupil who complained, 
for example, that he did not like mathematics : 
" Then that is the very study that you ought to 
pursue ; " and, indeed, the study of many subjects 
was often made repellant by the method in which 
they were taught. We are beginning to learn at 
last that pleasure in work is not inimical to the 
efficiency of the work, but, on the contrary, it in- 
creases that efficiency. Many of us find an image 
of ourselves in childhood in 



... the whining schoolboy, with his satchel 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school." 



282 The Religion of Hope. 

Bat now it is becoming the rule rather than the 
exception that children like to go to school and 
find a real joy in their work. 

Human activity is meant to be pleasurable. We 
know from experience that there is a pleasure in 
simply doing something. The sense of mastery 
over objects and forces, and the sense of achiev- 
ing the ends which we set before ourselves, give a 
real elation to life. But action must have a true 
end ; fruitless or aimless endeavor soon loses its 
charm because the action itself is not progressive. 
In actual achieving, however, there is a stronger 
attractive force than the mere desire for the result 
of our labor. For, in the first place, we do not and 
we can not pause contented over results. We 
plan for ourselves a certain task and think that 
we shall be content when it is is achieved; but 
when we arrive at the proposed end, when we 
attain the certain contemplated result, we quickly 
begin to look ahead for something else. to engage 
our interest and to draw out our powers. 

Take a familiar example from our every-day 
life. The desire for wealth apparently is the 
strongest desire which actuates many men. But 
why is it that when men have acquired wealth 
enough, and more than enough, to satisfy all rea- 
sonable wants they still keep on striving for more? 
The mere money, or even that which money can 
buy, is not sufficient to explain the persistent 
ardor of the pursuit. There are men, I am sorry 



The Joy of the Lord, 283 

to say, who have become so sordid that their 
whole desire and endeavor seem to terminate on 
lucre. But there are very many others of whom 
this is not true. In the case of these it is not 
the wealth, but the struggle for wealth, which is 
the chief attraction. The fascination of effort and 
achievement increases even while the attraction of 
the result lessens. 

But w^e are all familiar with the delight that is 
found in mere achievement, that is, not simple 
effort, but effort that accomplishes. The bustling 
housew^ife finds a keen pleasure in exorcising the 
demons of disorder and dirt; the activity, if not 
carried to the point of exhaustion, is pleasurable. 
The healthy artisan finds a joy in his daily activity, 
in using tools and producing fabrics. The student 
dehghts in the play and strain of his faculties and 
in winning, one after another, the objects of his 
research. The naturalist, like a Darwin or an 
Agassiz, discovers continuous happiness in push- 
ing; far and wide his investigations into nature and 
in drawing forth her curious secrets. The artist 
glows with pleasure in the mere effort by which 
the creatures of his imagination are wrought out 
and fixed in paint or marble. The inventor tastes 
a pure delight in the strenuous intension of mind 
out of which are born new contrivances for the 
advancement of industry, or the increase of human 
comfort. 

Now, the depth and purity of our pleasure in 



284 . The Religion of Hope, 

achievement increases as our work rises into the 
higher realms of action, and as it calls into exer- 
cise the higher faculties of our nature. The artist 
has a finer pleasure in his work than the mere 
artisan, unless the artisan is also an artist in his 
sensibility. The pleasure of activity rises in 
quality and in intensity also as our work rises into 
endeavor for moral ends. There is a purer and a 
greater pleasure in the pursuit of truth than 'in the 
pursuit of wealth. When truth is sought that men 
may be enlightened there is a still further rise in 
the joy of endeavor. 

The apprehension of moral ends and the effort 
to attain them raises the pleasure of action into 
happiness. It is not merely in creative effort, as 
Matthew Arnold suggested, but in creative or pro- 
ductive action along moral and spiritual lines, that 
man finds his true happiness. The philosopher, 
the poet, or the artist may be sad in proportion to 
his very power, but the philanthropist, the true, 
strong lover and server of mankind, is a man of 
joy. 

This, then, is the main thought to which I would 
lead your minds now. If the mere sense of achiev- 
ing gives delight, how much greater and purer is 
the delight when the sense of achieving is anima- 
ted by love, — when the sense of achieving rises 
into the consciousness of accomplishing that 
which benefits and blesses others. There is no 
satisfaction in work for its own sake, or in the 



The Joy of the Lord. 285 

objective rewards of work, that Is comparable to 
that pure pleasure, that sweet exultation of the 
soul, which labor and self-sacrifice for the good of 
men always produce. Man tastes the blessedness 
of God in unselfish work for man. 

Take it on the lower plane of service, that, for 
example, of ministering to the simplest material 
needs, such as feeding a hungry family. How 
strong is the sensation of pleasure that comes to 
us as we divide our store of food with those who 
have none ! Suppose you have a friend or an 
acquaintance who is involved in financial trouble 
and, though it be at the cost of considerable sacri- 
fice, you furnish the means of setting him, free 
from his embarrassment, how surely the very reflex 
of your deed brightens the day about you and 
gives a new zest to life. Perhaps at some time 
you have had the good fortune of rescuing some 
one who was in imminent peril of death; perhaps 
you have saved his life at the risk of your own 
life. I venture to say that nothing which you 
have ever accomplished in the line of material 
achievement has given you so much satisfaction, a 
joy that so constantly abides with you, as that 
deed has done. In deeds of ministry like those 
which I have named there is great joy, not 
merely in the result but in the very action, and 
this joy is sweet just in proportion as it has no 
alloy of selfishness. 

If we ascend to the still higher plane of spiritual 



286 The Religion of Hope. 

help and service to men, we find that such service 
opens up for us new phases of experience in pleas- 
ure. Suppose that, with the quick insight of love, 
you discover a man who is in a fateful grapple with 
some mighty temptation. It seems as if he must 
sink down in defeat and you come to his rescue 
with your words of encouragement, your sympa- 
thy with his nature and condition, your under- 
standing of his experience, and your faith in God 
and in him. The struggle is long and difficult; 
you enter into it so deeply that you feel the tre- 
mendous strain in your own soul, and so experi- 
ence a sort of vicarious passion for the man; but 
at last the effort is successful ; the evil is overcome, 
and the man stands, shaken and breathless, but 
saved, and saved through you. How blessed has 
been the endeavor ! How strong and pure is the 
joy that bathes your whole being. 

Suppose, now, that instead of helping one who 
is consciously in trouble, you give yourself to the 
task of waking up a soul for the first time to a 
sense of life's real meaning and purpose. Sup- 
pose that you give yourself to the effort of bring- 
ing him to a knowledge of God and of all that it 
means to be a child of God, and become thus a 
savior to him ; you have achieved the divinest 
deed possible for any one in this world, and tasted 
the sweetest bliss this side of heaven. I do not know 
why I say this side of heaven, for heaven itself can 
offer no greater gladness than that which is found 
in being a savior. There is no joy like that. 



The Joy of the Lord. 287 

But such service as I have described is not easy; 
it is not accompHshed merely by words. It in- 
volves labor of mind and spirit; often one must 
enter into the very agony and passion of Christ 
himself. 

To be doing good in the higher realms of human 
life, to be helping men in the spirit, is the most 
rewarding endeavor in which it is possible for us 
to engage. Life brings to us nothing so valuable 
as the capability and the opportunity for such 
ministry as this. No material rewards of labor, 
no external rewards that can be conceived of, 
have the sweet and strong fascination of the mere 
effort itself to serve our fellow-men in the spirit, 
when we are really giving ourselves to this effort, 
and strongly putting forth our powers in self- 
forgetfulness and self-sacrifice for the blessing of 
men. The joy that was set before Christ, on 
account of which, the writer of '* Hebrews " tells 
us, he " endured the cross despising the shame," 
surely was not merely a future and remote bless- 
edness that should come with the full accomplish- 
ment of his redemptive purpose. It was, rather, 
the joy of saving the world found in the very effort 
to save it. 

But the experience of the "joy of the Lord " is 
not confined to the highest and most spiritual 
spheres of human effort. Something of that joy 
comes into every human heart that is simply seek- 
ing to do good. Every deed of help to men, every 



288 The Religion of Hope. 

act of pure self-sacrifice, every ministry however 
humble, opens some channel for the inflowing into 
our life of the divine gladness. Our lives are made 
miserable by our selfishness, often when we least 
suspect it. The best medicine for our own sorrows 
is the effort to heal the sorrows of some one else. 
However heavy our personal trials may be, we 
shall forget our quarrel with life and with God if 
we will give ourselves steadily to the endeavor to 
make life brighter and fuller of comfort and bless- 
ing to others. So deep and persistent is this truth 
that at last it is getting itself formulated even in 
the scientific interpretation of the world. Evolu- 
tion, which has seemed to us so pitiless a process, 
with its appalling " Struggle for Existence " and 
its " Survival of the Fittest," is having to-day a 
larger interpretation, and men are discovering that 
the strongest force in the evolutionary process is 
not the *' Struggle for Life " but the " Struggle for 
the Life of Others." 

Deep in the very springs and sources of all life 
is planted the impulse which is working itself out in 
innumerable ways through all the rise of life from 
protoplasm to man, and from man to the Christ, 
and has its supreme expression in the cross of 
immortal love and divine self-sacrifice. 

Now the Church exists peculiarly for the salva- 
tion of men. How much that means it is difficult 
to put into a few words. It certainly means far 
more than we have been in the habit of conceiving. 



The yoy of the Lord. 289 

All good that we can do to men is included ; all 
improvement of life; all rescue from imperfection, 
physical, mental, and moral; all charities and min- 
istries of love to the needs of men's hearts and 
spirits as well as bodies ; all achievements of reform ; 
every betterment of material and intellectual and 
moral condition, — all these are included in the 
process of salvation. All ends and efforts that are 
discerned by love and dominated by spiritual pur- 
pose are comprehended in this great enterprise. 
In accomplishing this manifold work, by its funda- 
mental appeal to the moral sense and its character- 
istic ministry to the religious needs of men, the 
Church is fulfilling its mission, and in fulfilling its 
mission it enters into the joy of its Lord. Too 
much has the Church sought its joy in being the 
object of God's saving purpose ; there is a nobler 
joy than that; it is attained in the consciousness of 
being the means of God's saving purpose. Higher 
and better than being saved is being a savior, and 
to this experience and endeavor the Church of Christ 
is pre-eminently called. Too often the Church 
has folded its hands and sung its hymns in compla- 
cent delight over its own redemption, meanwhile 
its real redemption was farther away than it 
dreamed. Jesus said : " He that saveth his own 
soul shall lose it." The business of the Church is 
not to save itself, but to save the world, and in sav- 
ing the world it is to find its true blessedness. 

My brethren, you are in the Church not merely 
19 



290 The Religion of Hope. 

to get good, but to do good ; not merely to be 
comfortable in the consciousness of your own 
acceptance with God, but to give and to serve in 
sympathy with the spirit and purpose of him who 
is the Head of the Church in order that he may be 
the Saviour of the world. The achievement of the 
world's redemption is to be brought about through 
the body of Christ, which body ye are. Look this 
truth in the face and see what it means. Try to 
make out some of its clear and unescapable impli- 
cations that must come home '' to our business and 
bosoms." Your work as Christians, as members of 
the Church, the body of Christ, has a double focus ; 
it terminates on two vitally related ends: (i) The 
salvation of individual souls, — a work that demands 
individual effort; and (2) The salvation of the 
collective soul, or society, — a work that demands, 
with individual effort, the corporate action and 
devotion of the Church. The thought is large and 
can be only suggested now. To awaken individual 
souls and bring them into acquaintance and fellow- 
ship with Jesus Christ ; to help them to see the 
spiritual significance of life and to press forward 
into the realms of spiritual experience, — that is 
one part of the work. In that work each individ- 
ual Christian, in one way or another, may success- 
fully engage. Every one of us has some power, as 
every one of us has some opportunity, to touch 
with spiritual quickening some other life. Many 
of us think that we cannot do this by speech ; we 



The Joy of the Lord. 291 

shrink from approaching people on the rehgious 
side by means of personal address; but we forget 
that to do this is easy and its significance is slight, 
compared with the positive ministry in which we 
should engage by striving to live according to the 
spirit of Christ. No man can so much help me to 
faith by talking to me about faith as he can by 
visibly living a life of faith. No one can so 
strongly assure me of the comfort for my sorrow 
that there is in God as by himself visibly finding 
comfort for his own sorrows in God. No man can 
so powerfully move me to self-sacrifice for the 
good of others as he who illustrates that self- 
sacrifice in his own conduct. There is possible for 
every one of us a larger ministry to individual 
souls than we have yet attained ; and in that minis- 
try, if we can once crucify our selfishness, we shall 
find a pleasure richly compensating us for our 
labors and pains. 

But our work terminates not only upon individ- 
ual souls, but also upon society. To leaven society 
with the spirit of Christ, so that its laws, its customs, 
its business methods, and all its enterprises shall 
conform more and more to the law of love, and to 
do this by living on a high level of conscientious 
and unselfish citizenship and by consciously seek- 
ing the improvement and spiritualization of the 
organic life of the community, — this is but another 
part of the same work; it is the logical sequent of 
the salvation of the individual soul. Here, too, 



292 The Religion of Hope. 

we are pressed by the temptation to shirk our duty 
and to ignore our privilege. Here, too, a false 
modesty keeps us back from exerting our full 
power, and even from doing many things our 
ability to do which we are ready to acknowledge. 
The presence of evil in the political administration 
of society and in social customs and activities is 
due not merely to some ineradicable, malevolent 
spirit in society, but to the unfaithfulness of those 
who know the right and neglect to do it, those 
who have the knowledge of virtue in its springs 
and sources and fail to act fully according to the 
knowledge, those who are called by God to be the 
saviors of the world and are failing perhaps to save 
even themselves through their failure to fulfil the 
mission committed to them to be the saviors of 
humanity. 

This entire work of individual and social salva- 
tion from sin and ignorance and selfishness and 
misery, — in a word, this great work of creating 
the spiritual kingdom in which life shall find its 
true fulfilment, — is the work which God has 
appointed us. To this enterprise we are bound 
by all the love and authority and majesty of Christ ; 
to this we are bound by every sentiment of grati- 
tude and every mandate of duty; to this we are 
drawn by the attraction of that "joy of the Lord " 
which is sweeter than the bliss of Paradise and as 
deep as the unsounded abyss of the love of God. 
This is my message, nay, may it be the Spirit's 



The yoy of the Lord. 293 

message, to you to-day. Recognize and welcome 
the service to which you are called. Seek to bring 
some soul to God; seek to help upward some one 
who is down; seek to make the life about you 
better, more humane, more cheerful, more in har- 
mony with the law of Christ. Seek and find the 
joy of the Lord by faithfulness in doing His will; 
you will find it as surely as you give yourself to 
this divine endeavor; and then you will need no 
testimony from prophet or apostle to prove to you 
the real blessedness and the real triumph of life. 



XVI. 

THE NEED OF PATIENCE. 



Experience, like a pale musician, holds 
A dulcimer of patience in his hand 
Whence harmonies we cannot understand, 
Of God's will in his worlds. The strain unfolds 
In sad perplexed minors. Deathly colds 
Fall on us while we hear and countermand 
Our sanguine heart back from the fancy-land 
With nightingales in visionary wolds. 
We murmur, " Where is any certain tune 
Or measured music, in such notes as these ? " — 
But angels, leaning from the golden seat. 
Are not so minded : their fine ear hath won 
The issue of completed cadences ; 
And, smiling down the stars, they whisper, " Sweet." 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



XVI. 

THE NEED OF PATIENCE. 

For ye have need of patience, that having done the will of God, 
ye may receive the promise. — Heb. x. 36. 

'T^HERE is something to be done which often is 
-*- difficult and sometimes painful ; that is the 
will of God, constraining and guiding us through 
manifold duties and trials. There is something to be 
received which is beautiful and precious ; that is 
"the promise," coming to fulfilment in the comple- 
tion of our lives in blessedness and power — '* a bet- 
ter possession and an abiding one." There is also 
something necessary to the doing God's will and 
receiving the promise; that is "patience." We 
might summarize the text in three words — patience, 
obedience, fulfilment. The whole Christian life 
is comprised in these three words ; indeed, a very- 
large part is comprised in the two words, patience 
and obedience. 

Our immediate concern is with the first of these. 
The Greek word, viroixevco, means " to stay behind 
when others have departed," as brave and faithful 
soldiers obstinately maintain their ground when the 
weak and cowardly have run away. It means 



298 The Religion of Hope. 

also "to bear up under, to endure." The noun 
viroixovrj^ which is used in the text, is somewhat 
inadequately translated by " patience," derived 
from the Latin word, patioi', meaning '' to suffer." 
What is patience, in the Christian sense? It is 
not mere stoicism, the power to bear grimly and 
uncomplainingly because one must. Trial thus 
borne may sour the whole interior Hfe. Nor is it 
mere listless resignation, a helpless yielding to the 
inevitable. It is cheerful, sweet-spirited endurance. 
It is meeting difficulty and bearing pain and 
accepting trial in such a way that these heavy 
experiences are conquered and turned into sources 
of increased strength and beauty and fruitfulness 
of life. It is not merely steadfastness under trial, 
but it is the steadfast abiding in right and gracious 
moods, through all experiences. 

Christian patience is nourished by Christian 
hope. In a large, unselfish way it ever has respect 
unto " the recompense of reward." It is rooted 
in faith in God. Moses endured " as seeing him 
who is invisible." Jesus, " for the joy that was 
set before him, endured the cross despising the 
shame." The promise of the divine fulfilment of 
life underlies and feeds and justifies the patient 
endurance of life's tragical and as yet but dimly 
understood discipline. 

The apostle, writing to scattered Hebrew Chris- 
tians, who were subjected to persecution as well as 
to many temptations, says : ** Ye have need of pa- 



The Need of Patience. 299 

tience." He tells them that they need patience for 
two distinct yet inseparable reasons. The first 
reason is, that they *' may do the will of God." 
He does not mean that they must first have pa- 
tience, and then they may do the will of God; but, 
rather, that they have need of patience in doing the 
will of God ; still, the complete obedience toward 
which they are to strive is to be attained only 
through patient endurance. The second reason for 
patience is, that they may receive the promise. 
The goal and crown of life has its legitimate and 
powerful attraction. One does not run a race for 
the sake of going from here to there. One does 
not hew out a road that leads to nothing. There 
is a kind of talk about the selfishness of looking 
for reward that wearies one with its shallow senti- 
mentality and its utter lack of appreciation of life 
and its aims. Doubtless many men are selfish in 
their expectation of future reward ; but their fault 
or vice does not justify one in denying to life any 
end commensurate with its desperate struggles, its 
Promethean agonies, and its mighty hopes. 

Let us then consider the need of patience. To 
accept and progressively to fulfil the will of God 
as the regnant principle of life requires of us pa- 
tience. In common usage ''the will of God" 
means sometimes that divine purpose which com- 
prises in itself the whole aim and movement of 
God in human history. Sometimes it means the 
universal law of righteousness which is revealed to 



300 The Religion of Hope. 

us both in the sacred Scriptures and in the moral 
constitution of man. More specifically it is used 
to express the regulative principle of holiness 
which is the ground of obligation and the guide 
of conduct in the individual life. 

With respect to the individual soul, the will of 
God is both moral requirement and benevolent 
purpose. It concerns both action and character. 
It contemplates both what we shall do and what 
we shall become. God demands that we shall do 
right and he intends that we shall be right. In 
his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul exhorts them 
to be servants of Christ, " doing the will of God 
from the heart." In his letter to the Thessalonians 
he says : '' This is the will of God, even your sanc- 
tification," where his meaning evidently is not only 
that it is God's command, but also that it is his 
beneficent intention, that they shall become holy. 
Thus, **the will of God" indicates both a direction 
to follow and a destiny to fulfil. Obedience is not 
merely the conformity of acts to specific moral and 
ritual precepts, but far more it is response to a 
spiritual attraction. The will of God is to be done, 
but it can be done only as character as well as con- 
duct comes into harmony with that will. We do 
the will of God not only when we obey his man- 
dates, but also when we submit to his purpose and 
consentingly suffer it to guide our thought and rule 
our feelings and mould into symmetry and beauty 
our entire life. God's will is mandatory but it is 



The Need of Patience. 301 

also purposeful, for his love, quite as much as his 
sovereignty, is in his will. 

I. In the first place, then, the will of God is 
something to be done ; and we who are required to 
do that will " have need of patience." We have 
need of patience because God's will is difficult to 
do. Nothing is more certain than that to a soul 
struggling out of the bad habitudes of a sordid and 
selfish life righteousness is not easy. " If any man 
wills to come after me," said Jesus, ** let him re- 
nounce himself and take up his cross and follow 
me." Have you found that easy ? Is it not a 
slow and. painful and sometimes a seemingly futile 
struggle? The best life inevitably is the most diffi- 
cult, until it is achieved, until it becomes 

" the natural way of living." 

When I say that to do the will of God is difficult, 
I do not mean that God lays arbitrary and need- 
less exactions upon us, for he does not. Some- 
times, indeed, he seems to us to do so, for we are 
very ignorant and often very foolish. Sometimes, 
too, we mistake the exactions of men for the exac- 
tions of God. The Pharisees laid heavy burdens 
and grievous to be borne on men's shoulders. 
There are always those who are quick to identify 
their notions of what we should do with the divine 
commands. The progress of mankind into liberty 
is slow because of " the zeal without knowledge " 
that so often characterizes those who assume the 
right to speak for God. 



302 The Religion of Hope, 

It is not true that God ever designedly sets a 
hard task for us that he may thus put us through 
some sharp expiation of our sin before he shows 
us any favor. The difficulty of doing God's will 
lies mainly in us — in our self-will. Sin is the en- 
thronement of self over Hfe. Righteousness is the 
enthronement of God over life. The step from the 
one to the other measures an enormous revolution, 
and the complete transition involves a vast moral 
growth and discipline. When a man is " con- 
verted," — to use a word that is continually and 
harmfully misused, — when he turns consciously 
toward God, his nature is not at once entirely trans- 
formed. The controlling principle and tendency of 
his life are changed, but, beyond that, his nature 
lies like a rude and rebellious province that must be 
conquered and civilized and disciplined into loyalty 
and liberty. There is in human nature much tough 
resistance to the rule of the spirit. The passions 
are hot and imperious. The imagination is law- 
less. The heart is full of low desires and a strong 
impatience of any authority save that of its own 
lusts. 

Now the divine method is not to crush human 
individuality and to compel the soul by irresistible 
force. Character is the product of choices. Holy 
character is the product of holy choices, God is 
seeking in men the development of character; 
hence his method is to secure in them the rise and 
triumph of free choices against the imperious de- 



The Need of Patience, 303 

mands of selfishness and the gravitation of animal- 
ism. His requirements are always beneficently 
inflexible. There is no laxity in his purpose. 
There is no accommodation of the ideal to human 
weakness. Accommodation, the lowering of moral 
requirement to our condition, would defeat the 
very end which is infinitely desirable, that is, the 
deliverance and development of our natures out 
of weakness and imperfection. In many merciful 
and educative ways God does accommodate him- 
self to our ignorance and ineptitude; but there is 
no lowering of the ideal standard. That can never 
descend to us ; we must ascend to it. 

It follows, then, that while we are imperfect, our 
efforts to do the will of God are made at some cost 
to our ease and pleasure, and are accomplished 
with difficulty. For many, in the beginning of the 
spiritual life, every holy choice costs the death of 
some unholy choice; every volition of pure love 
comes into action at the expense of some selfish 
volition. Our endeavors after righteousness are in 
the line and are the sequent of a voluntary subjec- 
tion of our natures of God. Sanctification is God's 
work in man, but it is achieved through man, the 
various human powers and capacities being the 
channels through which divine grace operates. 
We must do God's will, if at all, consentingly, and 
by overcoming the dissent of our sinful disposi- 
tions. The Christian life thus demands in us 
alertness and a strenuous persistence. And just 



304 The Religion of Hope, 

here rises the need of patience. It is hard work to 
school the will into quick obedience to righteous- 
ness. It is difficult to subdue the flesh, and cast 
out pride and envy, and compel our selfish hearts 
to the service of love. One often grows weary of 
this internal fight, even though it is " the good 
fight." Sometimes, too, the special requirements 
of God are difficult to understand. Our desires 
sometimes seem needlessly crossed. Often, accord- 
ing to our low ideas of gain and loss, obedience is 
very costly. Well, righteousnsss is costly, else it 
were not worth much, — scarcely worth the toil 
and pain of that blessed life, eighteen hundred 
years ago, through which God supremely disclosed 
the ties that bind humanity indissolubly to himself. 

Thus far I have spoken only of the internal dif- 
ficulty of doing God's will, that difficulty which 
inheres in our ignorance and weakness and selfish- 
ness. There are difficulties also that belong to 
our circumstances. The drift of life about us often 
is away from holiness. There are temptations to 
evil self-indulgence that spring upon us from, with- 
out. There are obstacles to be overcome in our 
temporal condition and relationships. God's will 
must be done sometimes in the face of misconcep- 
tion and ridicule and even pugnacious opposition. 

The difficulty of faithfully doing God's will often 
is complicated and increased by the character of 
one's necessary associates who are indifferent to 
spiritual things and perhaps even godless ; some- 



The Need of Patience. 305 

times by the nature of one's business, as when 
fidelity to the right puts in peril, or even sacrifi- 
ces, the hard-earned fruits of years of toil. In 
many ways and through the action of many 
causes we may find it difficult and costly to hold 
steadfastly to righteousness. The quality which 
the Christian then most needs is patience, — the 
capacity to suffer and bear and hold fast that which 
is good, — 

" One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." 

Yes, higher than the noble pagan stoicism which 
the poet has voiced in these lines, is the virtue 
which the Christian needs, the patience that 
grounds itself in an obstinate faith in God and an 
unflinching devotion to righteousness. 

2. In the second place, the will of God is some- 
thing to be borne. Let us never forget that God is 
not so much seeking our service as he is seeking 
us. What we do is important, but mainly because 
it is fruitage and advertisement of what we are. 
The divine will does not terminate upon a certain 
kind of human conduct, but rather upon a certain 
condition and quality of the human soul. God is 
making men. Hence the adjustment of our lives 
is such as to develop us in certain graces and 
strengths of character. I do not doubt that God 
wishes us to be happy. For this very reason, in 



3o6 The Religion of Hope. 

part, he wills that we shall become holy. Life is 
a trial of faith, a discipline of love, a schooling in 
service. It is manifestly ordered so as to secure 
the largest and best results in character. This 
view of life can be got, however, only from the 
divine point of view. All earthly conditions, from 
one point of view, take on the aspect of tests. We 
call this life a probation, that is, a proving, a dem- 
onstrating of what quality the soul is, and what 
capability it has of spiritual culture. But from 
another and higher point of view, life is not so 
much probation as it is education. The change of 
emphasis on these two words indicates more 
clearly perhaps than any other single thing the 
fundamental change in religious thought which has 
taken place in our day. The prophetic mind of 
Lessing, a hundred years ago, saw that the real sig- 
nificance of Hebrew history, and of all history, lies 
in this, that it witnesses to a divine education of 
humanity. What is true of humanity is true also 
of the individual soul. In a sense, every man is 
on probation ; but in a deeper and broader sense, 
every man is undergoing a process of education of 
which probation is an important element; or, to use 
an expression now familiar to our ears, he is under- 
going a process of evolution from lower to higher. 
The world is not a court-room, but a school-room, 
and " our school-hours," as Carlyle said, '' are all 
the days and nights of our existence." 

Now God's will as something to be done must be 



The Need of Patience. 307 

obeyed under the conditions determined by God's 
will as something to be borne. Do not get the 
hard and unjust notion that the Heavenly Father 
takes one child here and plunges him into a hissing 
bath of affliction, and another child there and 
thrusts him under the harrow of pain. To a large 
degree we make our own environment; this plainly 
is a part of the divine plan. We are schooled out 
of sinful disposition by being permitted to let loose 
upon ourselves the retributive forces of natural 
penalty. We are taught wisdom by the smiting 
recoil of our own folly and perversity. But there 
is vastly more in our life, as a plan of God, than 
this. It cannot all be analyzed and explained here. 
This much, however, is clear; a large part of life is 
of a sort to work us out of all placid contentment 
and slothful ease. 

God's will, then, as the regulative principle of life 
has to be done under frequent oppressions of sorrow 
and pain, through subtle or tumultuous assaults 
of temptation, and against stubborn difficulties. 
There are the perplexities and doubts that rise 
both from imperfect knowledge, and from a rela- 
tively low moral state. The unchastened heart 
breeds more doubts than the puzzled mind, and 
doubts too of a deadlier sort. There are the multi- 
tudinous frictions and raspings of daily contact with 
men and things, — exasperating complications in 
business, worrying cares in the household, disap- 
pointments of cherished hope, the balking of pur- 



3o8 The Religion of Hope, 

poses that, apparently, have been the main threads 
on which our Hfe's aspirations and efforts were 
strung. And, with all these, there is the constant 
pressure of the strong currents of selfish and worldly- 
life which surround us. Some of these external 
conditions we are unable to change, except as we 
conquer them by developing a spirit superior to 
every circumstance. This is exactly what we are 
meant to do. If we present to our untoward sur- 
roundings a steadfast patience, that patience itself 
becomes an armature against all attacks that would 
disturb our peace. And then, too, God's will, 
working itself out in ways of discipline, moves 
toward its beneficent end, — the strengthening, 
beautifying and perfecting of our souls in holy 
character. 

St. James uses language on this matter which 
undisciplined and sensitive souls can hardly under- 
stand : " My brethren, count it all joy when ye 
fall into divers temptations," that is, experiences 
that test the temper and the faith, as well as solici- 
tations to evil, " knowing that the trying of your 
faith worketh patience. But let patience have her 
perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, 
lacking nothing." Patience — steadfast, brave en- 
durance — is the grace or quality of soul by which 
free course Is given to the action of that divine will 
which is accomplishing our full salvation. 

The apostle says : " Ye have need of patience 
that ye may do the will of God." So, every day, 



The Need of Patience. 309 

God is bidding us to be patient. Life is often a 
hard struggle. It is a militant campaign, and many 
a day is marked by a hotly contested battle — a 
battle that has not always resulted in victory for 
us. The swiftly passing years bring many cares 
and perplexities. Few are the days that have not 
their nettle-like irritations. Then there are days of 
heavy, tyrannous pain. There are losses for which 
there seem to be no compensations. There are 
graves along our pathway, some of them so fresh 
that the grass is not yet green above them, — 
graves in which lie buried loves and perished 
hopes. How many a man 

" bears a laden breast, 
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest." 

But to all the Master is saying : *' Be patient ; what 
I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know 
hereafter. Prove all things ; hold fast that which 
is good. Be steadfast, immovable, always abound- 
ing in the work of the Lord ; for this is the will of 
God, even your sanctification. My grace shall be 
sufficient for thee. Be of good cheer: I have 
overcome the world." 

It is possible for one to live in this world and be 
glad in spite of temptation and care and loss. It 
is possible to live in such a temper that sorrow 
shall be powerless deeply to agitate the heart. It 
is possible for us to attain a spirit of such purity 
and strength that God's disciplining will shall be 



310 The Religion of Hope. 

borne without outcry and wild storm of tempestu- 
ous feeling. It is possible to be superior to the 
thousand petty anxieties which each day would 
thrust upon us ; to overcome the frictions and 
irritations of business and domestic experience; 
and to expel from our griefs their bitterest element. 
But it can be done only by living persistently in 
the higher ranges of our nature. It is when we 
dwell in our lower moods of temper and feeling 
that we are conquered and tormented by anxiety 
and temptation. When God bids us be patient, 
then, he is but urging us up to a higher, sunnier 
plane of life ; drawing us out of our bondage to 
circumstance, and bidding us to come into that 
constant fellowship with himself in which the soul 
finds resources that are in no way subject to the 
accidents of time and place and possession. Stoi- 
cism says: "Be sufficient for thyself; then thou 
shalt be above circumstance, not elated by pros- 
perity, nor depressed by adversity." Christian 
Patience says: ''Let God be thy sufficiency; 
hearken unto him; then shall thy peace be as a 
river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the 
sea." 

Christian patience, unlike mere stoicism, is the 
product of trust in God, and confidence in the soul's 
divinely assured future. Be patient, O Christian, 
and in the darkest hour of this present time thou 
canst say to thy soul : " Hope thou in God : for I 
shall yet praise him, who is the health of my coun- 



The Need of Patience. 3 1 1 

tenance and my God." Believe in God and hope 
in God, and a whole tumultuous sea of sorrows 
cannot rob you of blessedness. 

We have need of patience in order that we may 
both do and bear the will of God ; but experience 
demonstrates this, that sincere and persistent 
endeavor to do the will of God, begets in the 
heart a power of cheerful and victorious endurance. 
It is not the one 

'^ Who does God's will with a ready heart, 
And hands that are swift and willing," 

who is fretful and anxious, and full of complaints ; 
who is gloomily or petulantly resistant to the dis- 
cipline of divine Providence. Faithful obedience 
turns every cross into a throne of power and illu- 
mines every cloud with a bow of promise. 

3. Finally: Patience in doing the will of God 
has its inspiration and its crown in the promise of 
God. This is the justification of patient service, 
that it has its final issue in a completed redemption. 
The troubled stream of life is at last to flow out 
into an immeasurable breadth of clear, sunny, 
everlasting calm. The long, stressful conflict will 
end in a triumph the fruits of which no lapse of 
ages can exhaust, and a peace the perpetuity of 
which can never be broken. 

" The promise " is the pledge of God's deep 
interest in men ; therefore it is the support of faith, 
the food of hope, and the inspiration to patient 



312 The Religion of Hope. 

endurance. The Christian Hfe is not a doubtful 
enterprise. God himself has something great at 
stake in our salvation. The completed redemption 
for which the ages have waited will at last appear; 

Strive to be great in patience. Do God's will 
zealously; bear his will bravely. Let sorrow 
come, and disappointment, and care, and pain ; 
they are divine ministers whose work is to dis- 
cipline you in wisdom and to develop you in 
beauty and strength. The longest day of toil and 
strife ends at last, and after toil comes rest. 

" Under the fount of ill 
Many a cup doth fill, 

And the patient lip, though it drinketh oft, 
Finds only the bitter still. 

" Truth seemeth oft to sleep, 
Blessings so slow to reap, 
Till the hours of waiting are weary to bear. 
And the courage is hard to keep. 

" Nevertheless I know 
Out of the dark must grow 
Sooner or later whatever is fair, 
Since the heavens have willed it so. 

" After the storm a calm ; 
After the bruise a balm ; 

For the ill brings good in the Lord's own time. 
And the sigh becomes the psalm." 



XVII. 

THE WAY TO HEAVEN. 



O Thou great Friend to all the sons of men, 
Who once didst come in humblest guise below, 
Sin to rebuke, to break the captive's chain. 
And call Thy brethren forth from want and woe : 

We look to Thee ; Thy truth is still the light 
Which guides the nations, groping on their way, 
Stumbling and falling in disastrous night, 
Yet hoping ever for the perfect day. 

Yes ! Thou art still the Life ; Thou art the Way 
The holiest know ; Light, Life, and Way of heaven ! 
And they who dearest hope, and deepest pray, 
Toil by the Light, Life, Way, which Thou hast given. 

Theodore Parker. 



XVII. 

THE WAY TO HEAVEN. 

I am the way, the truth, and the life. — John. xiv. 6. 

IN that wonderful discourse beginning with the 
words : '' Let not your heart be troubled : be- 
lieve in God and believe in me," Jesus was pre- 
paring the minds of his disciples for experiences 
that were sure to come to them in the days when 
he would be no longer with them. They could 
have had, at the time, only the dimmest idea of 
the great meaning that weighted his speech and 
made it rich enough to tempt and reward centu- 
ries of exploration. Much that Jesus said was for 
future, rather than immediate, use. His full mean- 
ing could appear only when experience, that 
master-teacher, should develop capacity and give 
point of view. Yet, as the conversation went on, 
the disciples must have had some glimmering of 
his meaning; they must have felt that his words 
reached beyond the present and shot a beam of 
light into the far future. Certainly the Church has 



3 1 6 The Religion of Hope. 

found in these words clear intimations of heaven 
and the heavenly life ; and we must read them in 
this sense, under the conviction that Jesus meant 
them to be a help and a guide to his followers, in 
succeeding times, in their thinking about death 
and the hereafter. 

Whatever ideas the disciples had of heaven were, 
doubtless, crude and limited, and the locality and 
outward conditions of the future life rather than 
the subjective quality of that life engaged their 
minds. Heaven was to them a place of rest and 
of happiness in the fruition of their hopes. 

Jesus, at the outset, found a common ground for 
their thought and his. Heaven is a place. *' In 
my Father's house are many mansions;" that is, 
heaven is an organized home-life and social-life. 
But the idea of place is at once subordinated to 
the idea of state or condition. Heaven is a fellow- 
ship and an experience, a realization of highest 
life. The succeeding words make this clear, for 
they reveal the unbroken continuity between the 
life of the soul here in this world and the life in 
the world to come. 

But let us pause a moment to note a peculiar 
and persistent characteristic of Jesus' teaching; it 
is the central place which he gives himself " Be- 
lieve in God, and believe in Me. ... If it were 
not so / would have told you. . . . / go to pre- 
pare a place for you. . . . / come again and 
will receive you unto myself. . . . Where / am 



The Way to Heaven. 317 

there ye may be also. . . . / am the way . . . 
No one cometh unto the Father, but by me'' 
It is an extraordinary feature of Jesus' method that 
he puts himself before his followers in this way. 
Yet there is nothing monstrous about his vast 
assumption as there would be if it were made by 
any other man. We cannot help feeling that this 
is the eminently natural thing for him to do ; not 
simply because we are used to the idea of Jesus* 
pre-eminence, and reverently famihar with his 
manner; nor because it is a necessary involvement 
of some theory of his person that he should claim 
pre-eminence; but because of our involuntary, 
almost instinctive, recognition of his transcendent 
personality. From the first moment he justifies 
himself to our hearts. His confidence and calm 
authority are irresistible ; we trust him because he 
is sure of himself If he were not so sure of him- 
self and of his necessary relation to men ; if he 
spoke doubtfully or with hesitation; his power 
would be gone. 

There is great significance in this. Such a 
method must have reason in fact. And, indeed, 
experience proves that departure from this method 
of Jesus is followed by failure in the attempt to 
bring men to him. Let go of Christ as central in 
the redemption of the world and you let go of the 
chief power by which men are moved toward the 
spiritual life. 

Let us return now to the conversation. Jesus is 



3 1 8 The Religion of Hope. 

speaking of heaven; the disciples are vaguely 
groping after his meaning. He says : " Whither I 
go ye know the way." Thomas exclaims : ** We 
know not whither thou goest : how know we the 
way?" Thomas' thought terminates on place 
rather than on state. Jesus' answer makes plain 
that he is speaking of himself as the way to 
heaven, not in the sense simply of a means to a 
place, but rather in the sense of a means unto a 
life. The idea of a heavenly life — a character 
and experience — dominates his whole thought. 
He says nothing of where, save in the words: ** I 
go to prepare a place for you," and " Where I am, 
there ye may be also ; " but he speaks explicitly of 
how: — "I am the way." The thought is difficult 
but the succeeding words aid us : ''I am the way, 
the truth, and the life." — I am the heavenly 
way, the heavenly truth, and the heavenly life. 
The goal of life, both here and hereafter, is not 
simply a locality, a place, arrival at which is the 
end of the way. Place is not fixed, limited, and 
final. The dominant idea is that of state, charac- 
ter, quality of life ; and to this the ide^ of place is 
constantly subordinated. 

The disciples thought first and mainly of place 
and circumstance. We are very prone to the same 
way of thinking. Many of us, indeed, are almost 
as limited in our thought as they. V/e ** want to 
go to heaven " because heaven is a place of ease, 
of freedom from toil and sorrow; in a word, a place 



The Way to Heaven. 319 

of satisfaction to our desires. It is still something 
to have, rather than somewhat to become. Like 
children, we think that there we shall be rid of what 
is irksome and disagreeable, and shall obtain what 
we covet. 

Undoubtedly under this crude conception there 
is a certain truth. But how immovably Jesus holds 
our thought, as he held the thought of his disciples, 
to the central truth, that the goal of life is not pos- 
session but experience; not things and circum- 
stances, but capacity and power; not a place, but 
a condition and quality of life. 

As the kingdom of God has its beginning here, 
and unfolds toward its future perfection of order 
and beauty, — manifesting itself through all the 
spheres and relations and activities of earthly life, 
— so heaven has its beginning in present character 
and experience. The way, which Christ is, is the 
process of unfolding our natures, under his influ- 
ence and tuition, into heavenly dispositions and 
capacities, of rising into heavenly experiences, of 
putting forth heavenly activities, of appropriat- 
ing heavenly fellowship, and of reaching toward 
heavenly ideals. 

We think only, or mainly, of shaking off the 
present, with its burdens of care, its fetters of 
habit, its necessities of self-denial, its pains and 
sorrows and discontents, and of springing at one 
bound into the full enjoyment of perfect blessed- 
ness ; but we cannot shake off the present. It is 



320 The Religion of Hope. 

part of us and we of it. Within it, as in a chrysalis, 
we are fashioning the future. Heaven is for the 
heavenly mind, the heavenly taste, and the heavenly 
capacity. There is a truth in the Hindoo doctrine 
of the transmigration of souls ; or, in other words, 
that doctrine is the caricature of a truth. The Hin- 
doo believes that the bestial man goes into a bestial 
body; for example, the glutton into a swine, the 
cruel and bloodthirsty man into a tiger. The truth 
is that we are now, in large degree, determining our 
future environment. 

All life here is meant to be a schooling toward 
heaven, so that heaven shall come but as the 
blooming of the bud into the flower. We talk of 
preparing for heaven as of preparing for a journey; 
but preparing for heaven is developing the heavenly 
spirit and capacity by present growth in all those 
qualities of mind and heart and soul which make 
the beginning of a heaven on the earth. If love 
were supreme, we sometimes say, heaven would be 
begun. It is true. We experience what we are fit 
for, here and hereafter. 

In answer to Thomas' question: " Lord, we 
know not whither thou goest; how know we the 
way?" Jesus said: *' I am the way, the truth, 
and the hfe." These words give us a strong in- 
timation, not to say revelation, of Jesus' idea of 
heaven. That he identifies heaven with knowledge 
of God and life in Him is evident from the added 
words : '' No man cometh unto the Father, but by 



The Way to Heaven. 321 

me." He is not laying down an arbitrary condi- 
tion. Jesus stands for the spiritual mind by which 
alone personality approaches God ; and the way 
to God and into the life of God is the way to 
heaven and into the heavenly life. God is the 
heaven of the soul; the fulness of life in God is 
the heavenly life. " It is not in heaven that we are 
to find God," said Godet, *' but in God that we are 
to find heaven." Ah, but how unreal and difficult 
all this is ! And how disappointing to our spirits, 
still so deeply immersed in the senses, still so crude 
and untempered ! Yes ; but there lies the truth. 
Heaven is not lowered to our present moods and 
capacities and tastes ; we are to be lifted up to the 
heavenly state by the discipline and purification 
and enlargement of our natures; and that is the 
process of salvation. 

Thus the words of the text begin to disclose 
their meaning. ** I am the way " into the life of 
God; so must we interpret Jesus. Now, in what 
sense can we say, must we say, that Jesus is the 
way to God and into the life of God? Certainly 
not in the sense that he purchased God's love for 
us ; for his whole mission is declared to be the 
result and expression of God's love. " God so 
loved the world that he gave his only begotten 
son." Not in the sense that he took away any 
barrier in the mind of God to mercy and forgive- 
ness toward men ; for such a barrier, did it exist, 
would be a barrier to the love itself of which Jesus' 



322 TJie Religion of Hope. 

coming was the supreme expression. Men have 
often crystaUized their doubt of God's love into the 
very theories of atonement by which they assumed 
to show how that love could be efficacious in sav- 
ing sinners. 

Yet the way which Jesus is, is a way for God as 
as well as a way for man. 

I. It is a way for God (i) of self-disclosure. 
It is the way of infinite love into the sphere of the 
finite. To human beings God must reveal himself 
in human ways; that is, through human personal- 
ity, character and action. He does so reveal him- 
self in and through every soul in proportion to 
each soul's capacity to receive and express him. 
The greatest soul is the best medium of revelation; 
through Jesus, therefore, the revelation is pre emi- 
nent. In him the love of God expresses Itself, 
pours itself forth, and finds Instrument for the 
execution of its purpose. 

"The way" is thus also, (2) a way of power. 
The self-disclosure of God Is a self-communication. 
In Christ God touches man, secures a real and 
efficacious contact with his reason and conscience 
and affections. Christ is " the power of God unto 
salvation." "■ In him was life, and the life was the 
light of men." He said : " I am come that ye 
might have life; " that Is, not mere respite from 
death ; ye have not yet begun to live. I am the 
quickening power which makes you alive unto 
God. 



The Way to Heaven, 323 

2. The way which Jesus is, is also a way for man. 
Jesus is ( i) the way of knowledge. We know God 
through him. The universe, as a means of reve- 
lation, is vague and enigmatical, compared with 
personality. It is personality alone which gives 
us the key to the interpretation of the universe. 
We read the laws of the world through the ration- 
ality of our own minds. The groping of the soul 

— ''feeling after God, if haply it may find him," 

— becomes, in its perception of Christ, the laying 
hold of God which is eternal life. 

(2) It is, therefore, a way of approach. The 
life-giving touch of God in Christ makes possible 
and actual the movement of our souls to the Father. 
Jesus Christ, in himself, — his words, his deeds, 
his character, his spirit, the totality of his life, — 
discloses the way to God. As the type and exem- 
plar of man, he shows himself to be not merely a 
way, but the way, into the heavenly life and experi- 
ence. First : By his exemplification of faith. In 
him we see what faith is ; what that exercise of the 
soul comprises. His immediate, continuous appre- 
hension of the Father illustrates his own word : 
" The pure in heart shall see God." Second: by 
his exemplification of obedience. Here is the clear 
exhibition of man's true subjection to the divine. 
This is no stoical endurance of bondage to a hard 
and inscrutable fate, but the free acceptance of an 
inviolably good and righteous will. In him obedi- 
ence is response to a divine attraction. Third: By 



324 The Religion of Hope. 

his exemplification of Sonship. It is a concrete liv- 
ing expression of filial confidence, glad reverence, 
and sweet fellowship. This is the way of the 
heavenly life ; it is not a didactic rule, or formal 
description, but the very life itself. Although on 
earth, in the midst of earthly engagements and 
experiences, he is still " the Son of Man who is in 
heaven." 

Interpreted by the living personality, faith in 
God is, for us, the frank acceptance of the divine 
good-will toward us, and, in the conscious experi- 
ence of the divine life and love, the discovery of all 
that we need — pardon and cleansing from sin, 
motives to holiness, and power to achieve the life 
of the spirit. 

Obedience to God is the disciplinary regimen by 
which our lives are shaped into habits of right- 
eousness. This is very different from doing some- 
thing in order that we may be saved. It is the 
free response of the creature to the Creator, the 
disciple to his Master, the child to his Father. It 
is the actual and progressive experience of salvation 
by the unfolding of the divine life in the soul. 

Sonship to God is the conscious entrance into 
the filial relation to the Father, personal commun- 
ion with him and joyous participation in his 
thoughts and purposes; it is the experience of 
confidence, love, aspiration, hope, expectation, 
content, blessedness. 

Faith, obedience, realized sonship — this is the 



The Way to Heaven. 325 

way which Jesus is and into which he would draw 
us. There is no other way. There is no heaven 
save for the heavenly hfe. And the heavenly hfe 
is not postponed to some future time and place, to 
be attained by the magical efficacy of physical 
death; it begins here and now. We have entered 
that hfe already in just so far as we have entered 
into the spirit of Christ. " If any man hath not 
the spirit of Christ, he is none of his." Nothing 
takes the place of this emergence of our souls from 
the death of sin into the life of the spirit; in this 
is the full meaning of salvation. 

But Jesus said also: "I am the truth." We 
must follow the same vital method of interpretation 
as that which we have followed in studying him as 
" the way." The meaning of these words is far 
more than that he spoke the truth. He is the truth. 
Truth is not merely a matter of knowledge and 
correct ideas ; it is a quality of life. Its highest 
form is not to be found in propositions or state- 
ments of doctrine, but in being, — in character and 
life. He who truly receives Christ receives more 
than the dogmas of the Church, and more even 
than the didactic utterances of the Scriptures. 

" Beyond the sacred page 
I see Thee, Lord." 

It is extremely important to know what is true. 
It is a great achievement to grasp the truth as state- 
ment of fact or principle. But it is a much greater 



326 The Religio7i of Hope. 

achievement to attain unto truth of being — to be- 
come the truth. 

All spiritual truth, as distinguished from what we 
call ** natural truth," that is, truth of natural facts 
and relations, is capable of full expression only in 
personality; in other words, truth has its ultimate 
end, not in knowledge, but in being. It matters 
little that we know many truths, if we ourselves 
are untrue. Jesus was not using a figure of speech 
when he said: "I am the truth." Being "the 
truth," he was in right relations to all being, — to 
God, the trustful, obedient son ; to men, the loving 
brother, the powerful helper, the enlightening 
teacher, and the perfect Saviour. In him love and 
righteousness, the vital elements of truth as quality 
of being and life, attained full embodiment. 

It is this which makes Jesus the type of w^iat we 
are to be. Here is the goal of our aspiration, — 
not simply to know, but to be ; not to stop, con- 
tent with having grasped certain principles which 
commend themselves to us as true, but to reach for- 
ward toward the full embodiment of divine love and 
righteousness in our characters. " Every one that 
is of the truth heareth my voice," said Jesus. He 
means : He that hath entered into this experience, 
in which truth is no longer held as a possession 
external to the thinker's self, but in which it has 
become incorporate with his very being, so that 
thought and will and speech and deed are true, — 
are the faithful and inevitable expression of his 



The Way to Heaven. 327 

innermost spirit, the very effluence of his character, 
— he heareth my voice and knoweth me as true. 

Rising to this conception of truth as quaHty of 
being, as belonging to the very substance of our 
spiritual life, we rise far above the dusty arena of 
debate. Opinions are of little weight compared 
with " truth in the inward part." Our thinking is 
no longer at variance with our action. Our hopes 
are no longer dissevered from the main enterprise 
of our daily life. Our unity with our fellow-men 
ceases to be a mere agreement of superficial ideas 
or customs, and becomes a solidarity of soul in the 
life of God revealed and embodied in Christ, and 
henceforth revealed and embodied in us. Herein 
is the true unity of the Church — the Church which 
ultimately is to be the redeemed humanity — in 
which the one life of God shall pour itself forth in 
limitless variety of beautiful and harmonious ex- 
pression, the symphony of a spiritual universe. 

In conclusion, I dwell for a few minutes on the 
words, ** I am the life." This entire saying of Jesus 
is cumulative in meaning. The meaning unfolds in 
the successive words, ''way," ** truth," "life." 

The way of faith, obedience, and realized sonship 
leads into truth as quality and power of being, and 
the soul, thus informed with truth, experiences the 
reality of life — that divine self-conscious energy in 
the possession of which man knows and feels him- 
self in God. This is the life eternal. This is salva- 
tion, not as a hope, merely, but as an experience. 



328 The Religion of Hope. 

Thus the heavenly way leads into the heavenly 
life by a spiritual process in which the incaVnation 
passes over from an object of thought into a fact 
of experience, and God manifests himself in his 
children. Thus man becomes a *' partaker of the 
divine nature," and thus is fulfilled the prayer of 
Jesus and the purpose of God : — "that they may 
be one, as we are one ; I in them, and thou in me, 
that they may be perfected into one." 

In this experience man becomes at last himself 
also *' the way, the truth, and the life," and the 
heavenly state fulfils the heavenly aspiration and 
the heavenly discipline. Then heaven is attained, 
— not a mere place, nor a mere state of fixed and 
dead uniformity, — but a power, an experience, and 
a life, in which the invisible 'and eternal God ever 
more and more completely fulfils and expresses 
himself in the thousand-fold harmonies of a spirit- 
ual cosmos, the radiant centre which is the Son of 
God, the archetypal man, the beginning and the 
end of the creation of God, the glorious Redeemer 
and Head of humanity in whom the Infinite Soul 
finds concrete and personal manifestation to all 
finite intelligences. 

But while the thought of heaven as a state and 
quality of spiritual life is the dominant thought in 
the teaching of Jesus, and while we need to inform 
our minds and chasten our desires and correct our 
aspirations and aims by this thought, it does not 
exclude the idea of locality and relationship and 



The Way to Heave7i. 329 

activities. Heaven is a place. There life will rise 
toward its fulfilment on every side of our capacity 
and need. There friends, long severed from each 
other, will meet with mutual recognition. There 
the tears of sorrow will cease to flow. There toil 
will not weary, and care will not harass, the soul. 
There all creative powers will have full scope. 
There, as here, we shall find engagement for every 
essential faculty of mind and hand. I would not 
impoverish the thought of heaven ; I would enrich 
it rather by showing that heaven is worth all the 
long struggle and tragedy of earthly life, worth all 
aspiration and endeavor, worth all that Calvary can 
mean to man and to God. But I would strip away 
all selfish and deceitful hopes. Heaven is for the 
heavenly mind ; it is the blossoming and fulfilment 
of the heavenly life, begun here in weakness and 
sorrow and conflict with doubts and fears and 
temptations, but sought and won by the way of 
faith in God and earnest striving after that holiness 
"without which no man shall see the Lord." 

Often those who endeavor most diligently to live 
the heavenly life have least consciousness of suc- 
cess and least confidence of obtaining the heavenly 
crown; but the faithful, though often baffled and 
cast down, though often too blind with tears or too 
faint with striving to see anything save to-day's 
duty and to-morrow's approaching mist of death, 
will surely find a satisfying fulfilment of life's pro- 
phetic aspiration in the presence of Him who said: 



330 The Religion of Hope, 

" I go to prepare a place for you. And if 1 go 
and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will 
receive you unto myself; that where I am, there 
ye may be also." 

" O happ)^ soul! be thankful now and rest; 
Heaven is a goodly land, 
And God is love, and those He loves are blest. 

Now thou dost understand ; 
The least thou hast is better than the best 

" That thou didst hope for. Now upon thine eyes 

The new life opens fair — 
Before thy feet the blessed journey lies 

Through home-lands everywhere, 
And heaven to thee is all a sweet surprise." 



THE END. 



Dr. Moxom's Books. 



THIRD EDITION.—- 

THE AIM OF LIFE. 

plain 3Dalfe0 to ^ouns S)5m ana Momm. 
By Rev. PHILIP STAFFORD MOXOM. 

One volume. 1 6mo. Cloth. 300 pages. Price, $1.00. 



Of this book, the New England Journal of Education says : " Under the 
title of The Aim of Life, Rev, Philip S. Moxom addresses to young people a 
series of plain, practical talks upon influences that are to be met, contended, or 
redeemed every day. The essays evince a keen yet sympathetic observation of 
young manhood and womanhood, and an appreciative regard for its foibles, the 
force of its environments, and above all, of its possibilities of achievement. 
That possibility of achievement, and the means thereto, derives a forceful signifi- 
cance from being made the subject of the first essay and the title of the book. 
Having thus laid stress on his principle, the author forbears to lift up beautiful 
ideals in the hope that their intrinsic merit shall draw all men unto them, but 
rather he endeavors to incite the noble instincts that practical every-day life 
must either foster or annul. Such titles as Character, Companionship, Tem- 
perance, Debt, The True Aristocracy, Education, Saving Time, Ethics of 
Amusement, Reading, Orthodoxy, show the scope of the theme, which, if .varied 
in expression, is one throughout all. The essays are not sermonic : they em- 
phasize the power of Christianity ; they recognize at the same time the power 
of personality. Christian ethics expressed in plain, forcible language, and 
innocent of didacticism, young people always appreciate. Such are Dr. 
Moxom's essay's, originally given to the public as addresses to young people in 
Boston and Cleveland. Now their publication, in convenient form, it is to be 
hoped, seals their value with permanency." 

The Indepejident says : " Of course it is a good book for young people to 
read, especially in the view given of character as the supreme result of life." 

The Review of Reviews says : " The chapters are marked by a high moral 
purpose and a direct, vigorous utterance." 

The New York Tribune says : " But he presents the old truths in such a 
vivid and picturesque way, clothing his thoughts, moreover, in such forcible and 
nervous English, that the most apathetic reader will be stimulated by a perusal 
of the thirteen chapters that compose the volume." 

The Springfield Republican says : " They have a degree of attractiveness 
quite unusual in volumes of homiletics." 

The Outlook says: " The scholar's hand is visible on almost every page, 
and the way in which etymology is made to yield illustration and exposition of 
the leading ideas of the successive addresses is both a noticeable literary merit 
and extremely effective as a method of instruction." 



Dr. Moxom's Books. 



SECOND EDITION.^— w 

FROM JERUSALEM TO NIC^A. 

The Church in the First Three Centuries. (Lowell Lec- 
tures.) By Philip Stafford Moxom, author of 
'' The Aim of Life." 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 

CONTENTS. 

1. The Rise and Spread of Christianity. 

2. The Organization of the Early Church. 

3. The Apostolic Fathers. 

4. The Struggle with Heathenism: Persecutions. 

5. The Struggle with Heathenism: The Apologists. 

6. The Struggle within the Church: Heresies. 

7. The Christian School of Alexandria. 

8. The First Ecumenical Council. 



The book is strongly written. It moves on from stai'ting point to goal 
with Ufe and vigor, everywhere revealing the signs of broad and comprehensive 
study and of the firm grasp of material. It must rank its author among the 
men who have brought to the teaching of history not only the best results of 
the scientific method, but an enthusiasm and power that make the past as real 
as the living present. — Standard, Chicago. 

In its picturesque pages are brought before us the great fathers of the 
Church, the fierce struggles and martyrdoms of those heroic days. — Golden 
Rule. 

The general reader who desires a compact yet comprehensive and intelligi- 
ble view of this early period of Chistianity. can find no better book for his 
purpose than this interesting volume. — Christian Work. 

Readers of this book will gain a pretty thorough general knowledge of the 
rise and spread of Christianity, the organization and development of the early 
church, the Apostolic Fathers, the persecutfons, the Apologists, the strugcrles 
with heresies, the Christian School of Alexandria, and the First Ecumenical 
Council. — Chicago Adva7i^e. 

This is an entertaining as well as instructive book by Philip S. Moxom. 
It comprises a series of lectures on Christianity, delivered by him under the 
auspices of the Lowell Institute in Boston last March. Each lecture illustrates 
some particular phase of the growth of Christianitv, its birth with the advent 
of Jesus of Nazareth to the first ecumenical council held at Nicaea, A. D. -^25. 
The struggles of the early Christians, the frightful persecutions to which they 
were subjected for holding the belief that Christ was the Redeemer of the 
world, the contest with heathenism and the church, the story of the great dis- 
cussion which led to the formation of the Xicene creed, viz., faith in the trinity 
of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are told with great power. Mr. Moxom's 
book is one that will recommend itself to every student of religious history, for 
its depth and breadth and its loftiness of style. — San Frattcisco Bulletin. 



By LILIAN V^HITING. 



After aH, it rests with ourselves as to whether we shall live in a 
World Beautiful. It depends little on external scenery, httle on those 
circumstances outside our personal control. Like the kingdom of 
heaven, it is not a locality, but a condition . . . [Pp. ii and i6.] 

"The World Beautiful " comes only to those with thoughts beautiful and 
acts in keeping therewith. The human mind impressed with the duty of 
human happiness as an every-day duty is quickest to see that it comes surest 
to those who give happiness to others. It is thus the great agent of unselfish- 
ness, wliich upHfts and exalts the race and brings heaven down to the homes 
of the earth. These essays, elegant in their literary work, without dogma or 
an effort at preaching, strike the chords that bring the sweet music to the 
human soul. In addition to the leading essay, from which the little volume 
takes its name, there are four others, viz : "Friendship," "Our Social Sal- 
vation," " Lotus Eating," and '" That Which Is to Come." The last named 
is a beautiful rehearsal of life's possibilities. The little book will be enjoyed 
by every thoughtful Christian reader, and to others it may possibly awaken 
a new train of thoughts, and very certain it is they will be pure and good. 

— Chicago Inter Ocean. 

It shows that the writer has risen into the clear atmosphere of truth, and 
it appeals constantly to the sympathies of men and women who recognize 
their duty and are glad of sympathetic words to help them in discharging it. 
This book will greatly increase the esteem in which she is held, and it reveals 
an ethical purpose and a spiritual power which are tempered by a considerable 
knowledge of the world. Rliss Whiting has put rhetoric to one side, and 
her readers will gladly recognize that simple truth is her utmost skill. What 
she has to say on the relations of friendship is very beautiful and very true, 
and the sincerity pervading these pages is not the least of their attractions. 

— Boston Herald. 

Such winning words of deep belief in the best, which is accessible to all 
of us, make friends of the reader at once, and he must be a rare person who 
does not lay down this unassuming volume with a feeling that he has been 
helped to live his life more generously and kmdly than before. — Literary 
World. 

The charm of freshness and simplicity in their treatment, . . . they 
go straight to the mark, and that mark a high one ; they are thoughtful, and 
can but be hopeful. — Advertiser. 



Ninth Edition. 
16mo. Cloth, $1.00 ; white and gold, $1.25. 

At all Bookstores. Postpaid, on receipt of price. 



ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 

ETHICAL RELIGION 

BY WILLIAM MACKINTIRE SALTER. 
One volume. 12 mo. Cloth, Price, $1.50. 



The familiar saying about the prophet and his own country is freshly 
illustrated by Mr. William M. Salter, of the Chicago Society for Ethical 
Culture, whose works might be called for in vain at most American book- 
stores, and which are yet translated into German, and in Germany every- 
where, as Mr. Edwin D. Mead writes, exposed for sale. . . . We, for our 
part, will say that the compliment done Mr. Salter in the recognition of 
his earnest and thoughtful work is richly deserved. — Chicago Dial. 

He [Mr. Salter] is a man of eloquence and earnestness, as these chs- 
courses show ; and their translation into German evinces their power to 
commend themselves to a much wider constituency than that to which they 
were first addressed. — The Avierican , 

There is not a little to commend in this volume. It inculcates a lofty 
morahty, and is far above the level of the utilitarian and evolutionary 
moralists. — Presbyterian Review. 

I am particularly obliged to you for Salter's book. Please say to him 
that I feel that I have gained theoretically as well as practically from read- 
ing it. What a noble and pure spirit breathes through the whole ! I have 
derived a fresh confidence in the power of a philosophy of life based on free 
investigation. — Professor Harold Hbffding, of the University of Copen- 
hagen. 

In the Zeitschrift fiir Philosophic tind Philosophische Kritik 

{Beigabeheft desZ<^ sten Bandes^ 1886) Professor Jodl says, at the 

conclusion of an extended review : — 

To a book like Strauss's Old and New Faith is Die Religion der 
Moral for these reasons infinitely superior, as well with respect to its 
scientific foundation as to its practical influence; and I cannot omit to 
recommend Salter's book to the most earnest attention of all those who 
feel the need of replacing the unhappy dualism between the religious and 
the scientific stand-points with a comprehensive ideal view. 



Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
price, by tJie publishers. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications, 

THE SOURCES OF CONSOLATION 
IN HUMAN LIFE. 

B.Y Rev. VV^ILLIAM R. ALGER, 

Author of " The Genius of Solitude,^^ ''Friendships of Women^'' etc* 

l6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 



The writer of this volume, a well-known minister among the Unitarians of 
New England, having reached nearly threescore years and ten, fittingly takes in 
hand a topic of special interest to older people and not without attraction even to 
the young. He is able to speak from experience as well as observation, and to 
give additional force to what he has to say by having himself seen and known how 
continually human beings need consolation amid the troubles of life. His purpose 
here is to furnish a full discussion of the subject and a setting forth of the neces- 
sity, the ground, and the essential method of consolation. Nothing doubting that 
he has something to say which is worth saying, "he hopes to communicate his 
message in a winsome and effective way, free from the perfunctory quality and 
mawkish traits so prominent in most books dedicated to this subject." 

Mr. Alger arranges the matter of his volume in ten chapters. First, the 
consolations in human life are classified and illustrated ; next, the weeping of 
humanity in all ages, or " the history of tears," is given. Following this touching 
chapter comes appropriate and tolerably full considerations of the relation be- 
tween the calamities of men and the providence of God : the mystery of early 
deaths, or the mission of the little child ; "partings, in human life, or the farewells 
of the world;" "our human need of faith in an all-pervasive and overruling 
God ; " the " true lessons of grief; " the " tragedy of the sea, and its removal ; " 
the "grounds for a cheerful trust in the perfection of divine providence; " "the 
consolation and true interpretation of the origin, office, and meaning of death ; " 
and in a concluding essay his view of the " latest form of theology, the divine 
purpose in the universe a perfect consolation for every ill." 

These are interesting passages, and they show with what thought and vigor 
the whole volume is written. The very title of the book will attract attention ; 
and the reader who once opens it will read far into it and, finally, through it. 
Mr. Alger's style has a pervading charm, and his wide survey of a theme that 
appeals to the whole human race is made with freshness, force, and originality. — 
New York Titnes. 



Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the 
Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



Messrs. Roberts BrotJiers' Pitblications. 

THY KINGDOM COME. 

Ten Sermons on the Lord's Prayer, preached at King's 
Chapel. By Rev. Henry Wilder Foote. 

l6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 



A memorial of a beautiful character and a true Christian reaches us in the 
form of ten of his sermons printed in a neat and handy volume. The late Rev. 
Henry Wilder Foote was pastor of King's Ciiapel, Boston. This quaint old stone 
church — "a rock amid the waves of time" — still stands on Tremont Street. 
The half-score of discourses are expository of the Lord's Prayer, and have thus 
a marked unity of thought and style. The volume is entitled " Thy Kingdom 
Come." Thoughtfulness, deep experience of life, acquaintanceship and com- 
muni(m with spiritual realities, and a fine command of clear and simple language 
are the characteristics most manifest in these sermons. Mr. Foote had a hatred 
of mere formalism in words or acts ; and loving to tear away the wrapper from 
the contents of truth, he pressed ever on to the reality within. The sermon on the 
petition, " Hallowed be Thy name " is a strong example in point, and recalls 
the power and vividness of Robertson of Brighton. This memorial of a scholar 
and Christian teacher — one of the brightest ornaments of the Unitarian pulpit — 
will be welcome to many. — The Critic. 

This little volume is one of delightful spiritual reading. It is a book of 
meditations without a trace of scholastic or polemical theology in it. Its spirit 
is indicated by such phrases as these, which we gather almost at hazard from its 
pages: "The first words of this mighty prayer lift us at once to the highest 
level:" "Names have a deeper connection with things than we sometimes 
think ; " " Christianity has well been called a dispensation of encouragement." 
These are the meditations of a soul accustomed to live in the higher atmosphere, 
to think upon the deeper things, and to walk in the sunlight of a great hope and 
courage. — Christian Union. 

The book will not only be treasured higlily as a memorial of its author, but 
the sermons in themselves will be found to be of unusual spiritual power. One 
hardly needs to be told, as in the few lines of the preface, that these sermons were 
preached after a time of deep experience. The reader who had not had the 
privilege of hearing the eminent preacher of King's Chapel will feel, as he reads 
these living discourses, that it is a rare soul, and one truly enlightened, who 
speaks to him. The literary character of these sermons is high and chaste, but 
the helpfulness of the discourses, to souls perplexed about the nature and value 
of prayer, is their notable characteristic. — Boston Advertiser. 



Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the 

Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



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